


Training Wheels

by betts



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Bratting, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Loss of Virginity, Love Triangles, Possessive Behavior, Practice Kissing, Protective Older Brothers, Recreational Drug Use, Secret Relationship, Semi-Public Sex, Teacher-Student Relationship, Underage Drinking, WTFfic, as God intended, bellamy is always in a suit or leather jacket or shirtless, clarke is a manipulative little shit in a schoolgirl outfit, that's it that's the whole fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-06-30 21:19:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 124,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15759888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts
Summary: Clarke is pretty sure the new guy, Finn, is going to ask her out. The problem is, she's never had sex or even been kissed, and she wants to be prepared for it.So she does what any good student would do: seek out the help of an expert, her best friend's older brother — who is about to become her history teacher.Winner of the 2018 Bellarke Fan Work Award for Best Teacher!Bellamy





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note that I've chosen not to archive warn, but chapter warnings will be given at the end of each chapter as necessary. 
> 
> Clarke is 17 and Bellamy is 25.

 

* * *

 

Octavia’s big brother knows everything. When Clarke was a kid, he taught her how to cup her hands together and blow through her thumbs to make a train whistle. He used to take her out to the backyard in the middle of the night and show her all the constellations. When she got a car, he taught her how to pump gas and check the oil and change a tire. Every Thursday night he gets free pizza coupons from winning trivia at his favorite bar. He comes over to Clarke’s house to change out the A/C filters in summer and clean out their gutters in spring and weatherproof the windows in winter, and when Abby tries to pay him, he refuses but always accepts an invitation to stay for dinner. He reads books that are long and boring and he always has overdue library fees. He went to college for history and graduated summa cum laude, but now he’s back home taking care of his mom and Octavia and working as a substitute teacher at Clarke’s high school.

So, Bellamy knows everything, and he’s always willing to help Clarke when she asks for it, which is why she’s decided he’s the only person she can go to about her current problem.

She knocks on his bedroom door. It’s a Tuesday afternoon and Clarke is waiting for Octavia to get home from cheerleading practice. They’ve been best friends since before kindergarten and Clarke knows the Blakes’ garage door code by heart so she’s always welcome inside, even when no one’s home. Their house is only a block away from school, and student parking is a nightmare, so every morning Clarke parks in front of their house and walks to school with Octavia, unless Bellamy is teaching that day, and then they go in his truck, all squished together in the cab.

“Come in,” he says, and when she opens the door he’s propped up on his bed playing Overwatch. He’s not wearing a shirt because he’s never wearing a shirt when he’s at home, even in winter when it’s freezing. He has a beard now and he’s grown his hair out a little. It makes him look older which probably helps when he’s teaching. Even though he doesn’t have to, he always wears a suit to school so no one will mistake him for a student.

“Good afternoon, princess,” he says with his Jean-Luc Picard impersonation for some reason, glancing over for just a second before returning his gaze to the TV. He smashes the buttons on his PS4 controller but somehow makes it look graceful. Clarke knows better than to interrupt him during a match, so she perches at the edge of his bed and watches. He’s playing McCree on the Hollywood map, and he’s climbing above the buildings at the third choke. Clarke doesn’t play Overwatch but she’s watched him play enough that she knows all about it.

“It’s high noon,” McCree says. The sound of four gunshots follow, then a female voice: “Quadruple kill!”

There are two minutes left in the match. Clarke scooches back on the bed until she’s criss-cross-applesauce and leaning against the faded Nine Inch Nails poster he’s had up for as long as she can remember. She pushes her uniform skirt down between her legs so her panties won’t show, not that he would ever look. It’s only September so it’s still hot out, and Bellamy’s room is hotter than the rest of the house. Clarke unbuttons the top three buttons of her shirt to let in the air from the oscillating fan. She wishes Bellamy hadn’t covered up the pool so early this year.

They win the match with thirty seconds to spare. Bellamy’s ult is Play of the Game, but he escapes to the menu before it ends and turns his attention to Clarke. “What’s up?”

Clarke plays with the hem of her skirt and keeps her eyes trained downward. She’s been thinking about this all week and now that it’s happening she wants to chicken out. She can always tell him she needs help studying, or her tires need air, or she’s just bored. None of those are weird things. This is probably a weird thing.

Before she can say anything, he asks, “What’s wrong?” and there’s genuine concern in his voice, and she knows if she looks up he’ll have that little wrinkle between his eyebrows and that look on his face like he’d be willing to do anything for her because he considers her part of his family. And that makes this _extra_ weird.

“Nothing,” she finally says. “I just have a problem is all, and I was wondering if you could help.”

“Sure.”

Clarke fidgets and straightens out her legs to cross at the ankle. Smooths down her skirt again. God, his room is hot.  

“There’s this boy…” she begins.

“Uh huh,” he says skeptically.

“His name is Finn. He’s new at school. And I really like him, and I think he really likes me.” She risks a glance at him to gauge his reaction. His expression is open, curious, not quite the darkened cloud of over-protectiveness she’d been expecting (and maybe hoping for). “I think he’s going to ask me to homecoming.”

“Okay. What’s the problem?”

“I just get the impression that he’s, you know, experienced.”

She can see the gears turning in Bellamy’s head while he tries not to reach the obvious — and correct — conclusion.

“And I’m not.” Her face flushes when she adds, “I’ve never even been kissed.”

Still Bellamy says nothing, and now she’s so nervous she could cry. What if he gets mad at her? He’s never been mad at her specifically before, always just shades of annoyed, but she's seen what he’s like when he’s mad, like the time Octavia and Clarke went to a party where a guy groped Octavia’s boobs, and Bellamy came and picked them up at two in the morning and threatened to break the guy in half if he ever came near his little sister again.

“I just,” Clarke says, “I don’t want to be bad at it. I want — want to practice first. So I’ll know what I’m doing.”

Her request clicks into place but he looks like he still doesn’t believe she could be asking what she’s really asking, so she blurts out, “Will you teach me how to kiss?”

“Clarke…” he says, and her eyes sting with embarrassment, because she’s just Clarke now, not princess or brat or any of the other nicknames he has for her when he’s just joking around.

“It’s okay, nevermind,” she says quickly, and scoots off the bed, but before she can dart out of the room and never think about this again, he catches her by the wrist and stays silent until she finally looks at him. With her free hand she wipes a stray tear off her cheek. She hates how easily she cries.

“Sit down,” he says, and doesn’t let go of her wrist. She sits at the side of the bed, closer to him now, so close she can see all his freckles which have darkened over summer, and all the scars on his face from when he got into fights as a kid, and the little dark splotch on his left iris that Clarke has drawn hundreds of times in her very secret sketchbook she keeps under her bed. “There’s something else going on. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Not really. I’m just. I’m scared. I feel like everyone already knows everything about sex and dating and whatever, and I don’t know anything. I don’t know what I like or how to ask for it, or what will happen when I don’t like something. And I like Finn so much, I don’t want to come off as, like, this virgin or prude or something —”

“Hey, hey,” he says, calming her, pulling her closer to him until her face is buried in his chest and she takes a deep breath and smells him: Irish Springs soap, expensive organic detergent because Octavia breaks out from the cheap stuff. It reminds her of when she was little, really little, right after her dad died and Clarke’s mom found an ad in the paper for a woman willing to babysit during the day. The woman had a pre-kindergarten daughter she stayed home with, and so Clarke met Octavia and Bellamy and basically never left. Clarke doesn’t remember a lot about those early days, except she was always empty-feeling, and the only times she felt okay were when she would fall asleep on top of Bellamy, her new big brother, listening to his big heavy heart and pretending it was her dad’s.

“It’s okay,” he says. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want.”

“That’s the problem,” she says, words muffled in his chest while he rubs soothing circles over her back. She pulls away. “I _do_ want. But I don’t know what I want or how to ask for it. And I just —” She takes a deep breath and forces her voice to stay steady. “I want someone I trust to teach me.”

He looks away and purses his lips, the same expression he gets when he knows they have food in the fridge but Octavia wants to order delivery. “I’m too old for you, Clarke.”

“That’s exactly why I’m asking you. You’re, like, ancient.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean you know everything. You’ve been everywhere and done everything and I trust you more than anyone else.” She’s tempted to ask him how many people he’s kissed, how many he’s slept with, something she’s been curious about for years, but she suddenly realizes she doesn’t want to know the answer.

He sighs, the same sound he makes when he’s about to tell Octavia they can get delivery but she has to be the one to call it in. “If we do this, we have to agree to a few things.”

Clarke sits up straighter. His hand is still gently gripping her wrist. She wonders if he can feel her fluttering pulse, and wants him to let go just as much as she wants him to hold on. “Okay.”

“One, you have to make sure Octavia is okay with it. I don’t like keeping secrets from her.”

“I already asked. She’s cool with it.” Her exact words were: “Ew, not my fucking business.”

“Christ,” he says, and runs a hand through his hair. “This is a premeditated thing, isn’t it?”

“Uh huh.”

“Okay, two, kissing only. Nothing else. We’re keeping it PG-13.”

“Sure.”

“And three, once you figure out what you want from this Finn guy, don’t give him an inch of slack, okay? If I find out he pressured you into something…” He trails off, and a thrill of satisfaction climbs up Clarke’s back.

“Deal.” She closes her eyes, puckers her lips, and leans in.

“Whoa, jesus, hold on,” he says, a firm hand on her shoulder keeping her from getting closer. “Eager much, princess?”

There’s amusement in his voice, and she would be embarrassed if it were anyone but Bellamy, who has seen her in every unflattering and awkward situation she’s ever been in. She has to bite her cheek to keep from the sigh of relief that nearly escapes her at being called princess again, even though she claims to hate it. 

“Come on,” he says, moving over to give her room. The covers are all scrunched at the foot of the bed. She lies down beside him, on her back, staring at the ceiling. Her heart is racing in her chest. Bellamy is on his side with his head propped on his hand. “Better?”

“I guess.”

“This isn’t going to be fun or sexy, okay. It’s a lesson.”

She believes him. Sometimes the health teacher Mrs. Green asks him to come in for sophomore sex ed to talk to the boys separately and answer their questions. He’s probably used to having awkward conversations with teenagers.

“Okay,” she says.

“The right thing to do is to ask permission first, but most dudes don’t do that because movies don’t do that. So this Fen guy —”

“Finn.”

“Whatever. If he’s good, he’ll wait for the right moment. If he’s less good, he’ll force the right moment. And if he’s bad, it won’t be the right moment at all.”

“He’s probably good.”

Bellamy snorts a laugh. “Sure.”

“How do you know what the right moment is?”

He touches her chin to pull her gaze toward him, and when their eyes meet he’s looking at her intensely, darkly, brushes the pad of his thumb over her cheek, and leans down a little, so close that her eyes cross and her breath hitches in her throat. He stops less than an inch from her lips and says, “There. You feel that?”

“I don’t think so,” she says, but can only manage a rasped whisper.

He hovers there, still and silent, watching her. His face has never been this close before, and at first her instinct is to wiggle away, to give him space, but she doesn’t, and after a few seconds, something clicks, and suddenly she can’t not be kissing him, has to grit her teeth to keep from meeting him halfway, wants it so bad it hurts. Before, it had only been an intellectual want, curiosity and its resulting satisfaction, but now something in her body wants it. Wants him.

It must be something he’s doing, she thinks. He’s a very good actor.

“There you go,” he says, voice low. “Now you feel it.”

“What do I do with my hands?”

He takes one and puts it at the side of his neck, so her fingers are grazing his hairline. On impulse she threads them into his hair, soft like Octavia’s but thicker. The last time she touched his hair this intimately was when she was eight or nine, and she used to sit on the couch while he sat on the floor watching TV and she would practice braiding his hair and putting sparkly butterfly clips in it. The only time he complained was when she pulled too hard.

“Where do you put yours?” she asks, and he rests a heavy hand on her waist and pulls her body toward his, his lips still infuriatingly close but not touching. His body is unbearably hot, lined up to hers toes to chest, and it should feel weird but it doesn’t. It feels like everything else she’s ever done with Bellamy: easy and fun and exciting. Nothing bad ever happens around Bellamy.

“We’ll start slow, okay?” he asks. She watches his eyes flick down to her lips.

She gives a small nod, and he closes the gap between them. His mouth feels soft and dry against hers. She doesn’t think to shut her eyes or even kiss him in return. Her lips are pursed firmly together.

He pulls away, smiling. “You’re supposed to kiss back.”

“Oh.”

“Just relax, okay. Don’t overthink it. Do what I do.”

He kisses her again and this time she loosens up, parts her lips slightly, and he peppers little kisses on her lower lip, the corner of her mouth. A small thing, but so overwhelming. It feels good, but she doesn’t know how to react until his thumb skates over the bottom of her ribcage, his enormous hand curled around her small waist, and then her mouth seems to move of its own accord, meeting his movements, soft and slow. Her eyes close. Her fingers curl into his hair and tug a little, and her knee slides up to his hip.

He laughs lightly and pulls away. “You're always such a quick study.”

“Tongue now?” she asks, knowing she sounds too eager.

“Okay, but let me lead and pay attention to what I do.”

When he kisses her this time, he licks gently across the seam of her lips, and she opens to him, pushes her tongue to the bottom of her lower teeth, and his meets hers, warm, wet, and it should be gross but instead it’s building up all this pressure between her legs, heavy but she feels like she’s floating. He doesn’t really taste like anything, but she knows she tastes like toothpaste because she brushed her teeth before knocking on his door, just in case. He runs his hand from her waist to her lower back and drags their bodies flush. Somehow it’s not enough; she wants to be closer. Before she can even get used to the feeling of another person’s tongue in her mouth, he darts away and sucks her bottom lip and she gasps in surprise and lets out a sound like she stubbed her toe on a bed frame. Bellamy pulls away quickly.

“Sorry,” he says. “Got carried away.”

“No, do it again.”

He takes no time in slotting their lips together again and now the kiss is a little harder and their movements are faster, but she’s keeping up, and when he sucks her lip between his teeth, he bites down a little and she makes the sound again. She feels the same heat on her cheeks she gets when she’s had a beer or two, and the feeling between her legs when she wakes up after a sex dream. There’s something long and hard pressing against her pelvis and it takes her too many seconds to conjure anatomy textbook pictures. The realization dawns on her that she’s in bed with Bellamy Blake and he has an erection because of her, and she’s surprised that she’s not actually weirded out at all, her best friend’s older brother’s hardened cock just a few layers of cloth away, his tongue in her mouth. It all feels pretty normal and right actually, and makes the pressure between her legs build until it becomes nearly unbearable. She knows about orgasms but she’s never been able to give herself one, and she wonders if she’s about to have one, except she knows somehow it’s not enough, that he needs to shove his thigh between her legs or finger her or something, and he won’t because he already said that was off-limits. When she begins to pant and tremble, he pulls away again.

“You okay?”

She nods. She feels like she’s about to shatter.

He pets her hair, tucks it behind her ear. His lips are red and wet, and she can feel the wake of the roughness of his beard on her skin. Boys at school don’t really have beards yet. “God, look at you. Get keyed-up easy, don’t you, princess?”

“I —” If she could turn any redder, she would. “I’ve never had an orgasm, either. It’s kind of a problem.”

For a second, he gets a determined look on his face, the kind he always gets when she needs something and he’s ready to jump in and help. But it only lasts a second before he trains his features back to teacherly complacence. “You’ll have to google that one on your own.”

“I have. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

It seems to physically pain him to say, “I can’t help you with that.”

She hooks her leg around his hip so his thigh is pressed against her, his big, hard thigh, and she shifts and feels only a fraction of relief, her wetness sliding around her drenched underwear. “Please?”

“Clarke,” he says, and she’s Clarke again, and he’s giving her the face he makes when he will absolutely _not_ pick up McFlurries on the way home because they haven’t even had dinner yet. She knows when she’s lost, and when not to push.

“Okay,” she says, disappointed. “Will you kiss me one more time to make sure I have the hang of it? Like a test.”

“Do you want a grade, too?”

“Oh my god,” she says, exasperated but pleased that he can still joke with her, that things haven’t changed, that she made the right choice coming to him.

He gets suddenly serious and says, “You know you can talk to me about anything, right? I may not be able to...do everything you want me to do, or have all the right answers, but we can always talk. I’m always here for you.”

“I know.” She wants to take him up on the offer right now, ask him about his erection, if he enjoyed this, if he finds her attractive or if he still thinks of her as a kid even though she has boobs and a driver’s license now, if he thinks about her when he masturbates. She wants to tell him that she’s had countless sex dreams about him, weird ones where he’s holding her down and fucking her and she can’t breathe, where he finger-fucks her until she’s on the edge of coming but never pushes her over, where they’re in a weird dystopian hellscape and have to fuck in a gladiator pit for a cheering audience. She always wakes up freaked out and mortified by them, and chalks it up to the fact that he’s kind of the only guy she’s friends with.

More than anything, she wants to see his cock, just to look at it, compare it to what it looks like in her dreams, in textbooks, in pictures on the internet she feels too guilty and embarrassed to look at for more than a couple seconds at a time before exiting out and clearing her browser history. She wants to hold it in her hand, put it in her mouth, slide it between her tits like she read in a romance novel once. And she really, really wants to feel it inside her, all the way inside, even if it hurts.

And it’s only Bellamy. She’s never thought these things about anyone else, never felt safe enough. She has a real, genuine crush on Finn but the thought of doing anything like that with him makes her anxious and she doesn’t like thinking about it. She doesn’t have a crush on Bellamy at all, or at least, she didn’t think she did, but maybe she’s had a crush on him for so long and it built so slowly that she never noticed it until now, until she’s panting and shaking underneath him, dying for him to kiss her again.

Then she reminds herself: This is for Finn. Finn, who is her age, who befriended her eagerly and openly on the first day of the school year, who compliments her shyly every day on her hair or makeup, who listens intently during their conversations at lunch. Finn is the first boy to ever like her, or at least show it. Finn is real. Finn is at her fingertips.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Bellamy asks. “You’re still shaking. Here.” He brushes her hair aside and kisses at the juncture of her neck and shoulder. Her mouth falls open and she gasps and tries not to make the sound again. He hums against her throat and says, “Sensitive spot. What about…” and bites gently at her earlobe, and the sound she makes doesn’t sound like a cry of pain at all, but a cracked groan of pleasure she’s never heard herself make. “I wish all girls reacted like you.”

“They don’t? Is there something wrong with me?”

He kisses and bites down her neck, and with each exhale she makes, a little whine comes out too.

“No,” he says against her skin. “You’re perfect.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The response on this fic has totally floored me. Your feedback encouraged me to expand this chapter nearly double what it was (and split into two), and I think it's a lot better for it, so thank you!

For days after, she does everything she can to get herself off. She thinks of Bellamy’s mouth on hers, on her neck. His big hand spanning the width of her back. His hard cock pushed up against her. Nothing happens. She works at it for hours and sometimes pushes herself so far she nearly hyperventilates. The shaking thing happens again, where her entire body tenses up and trembles with tension, and it takes nearly an hour to calm herself down. She tries every position she can think of: on her back, on her knees, her feet propped against her headboard, a pillow between her legs, hanging off the edge of the bed, on her side with one leg up, which gave her a cramp in her hip.

She gets so focused on figuring out the mystery of orgasms that when Finn comes up behind her at lunch, puts his hands over her eyes, and says, “Guess who,” she realizes she had forgotten all about him. He’s been gone visiting a campus in Cleveland for the weekend. When he had first told her he was going to be visiting a lot of schools over the next few months, it made her feel self-conscious — she hasn’t started her applications, has no idea how to decide on a college at all; they all look the same when you don’t know what you want to major in. Her mom has only mentioned it a couple times, not quite being pushy but acting like it, as if supporting Clarke's college choice is something she should do but doesn't actually care about the outcome. She says things like, “You really should get on that, honey,” and, “Haven’t most of your friends already decided?” but, like with everything in Clarke's life, Abby offers no actual emotion behind her words, no consequence or reward.

“Aw, hey,” Clarke says, smiling, and he lowers his hands and takes a seat beside her. He never brings a lunch or money to buy one, so he helps himself to Clarke’s container of grapes. It’s how they met, actually. Clarke was sitting alone at lunch because she packs and all her friends buy, so there’s always a few minutes while she waits for them to get their lunch trays and have a seat with her. Finn, being new, must have either just wanted a place to sit or felt bad for her, so he took a seat at her table. She asked where his lunch was and he said he didn’t have one, so she offered him some of hers, and they struck up an instant familiarity. Kismet. And she couldn’t help but notice he was really, really cute. That was about a month ago, and she's shared her lunch every day since. 

“How was your trip?” she asks him.

He pops a grape into his mouth. “Nice campus. Might apply. Hey, what are you up to Friday?”

“Nothing,” she says, taking a bite of her sandwich and trying not to blush. They haven't hung out outside of school yet. 

“Cool. Me and Murphy are going to a truck pull.”

She doesn’t mean to sound judge-y, but she totally does: “A truck pull? Really?” She has to force herself not to wrinkle her nose.

“Yeah, it’s gonna be great.”

The genuine glee in his smile is what sells her on it. He’s from Pittsburgh where she doesn’t imagine they have things like truck pulls, so he probably thinks they’re cool instead of ridiculous and hickish. Arcadia is basically nowhere, dead-center of a long stretch of nothing between Columbus and Cleveland. Actual civilization is over an hour away in every direction.

“Sure, I’ll go,” she says.

 

* * *

 

Octavia agrees to go too, but not as Murphy’s date because he claims to have a girlfriend who lives in another state. No one believes him. Clarke has always thought he was kind of creepy and did her best to avoid him over the last eleven years, but somewhere along the line he and Finn became besties, so here she is on a Friday night in a town that makes Arcadia look like a bustling metropolis — as in, an empty field with a dirt path across it that took nearly two hours of backroad driving to get to, and which almost made her carsick — sitting on some rusty risers, watching a Chevy 4x4 pull a three-ton sled two hundred and fifty feet across a dirt path.

And yet, the stands are packed, and it seems like a community event, though what kind of community could form around something like this baffles her.

The weather is already beginning to change. The days are hot but the evenings are chilly, and as the sun sets, she crosses her arms over herself, not having thought to bring a jacket.

“I’m kinda cold,” she says to Finn, who immediately takes off his ugly neon green windbreaker and drapes it around her shoulders.

“I’m cold too,” Octavia says in Murphy’s general direction.

Murphy doesn’t take his eyes off the Chevy. “Sucks to suck.”

When the pull is over — and maybe someone won? Clarke can’t figure out how the rules work — something of a party starts up in the field inside a wide circle of trucks with the tailgates put down. The biggest bonfire Clarke has ever seen roars in the center. Someone taps a keg and then there’s a Natty Light in Clarke’s hand that she’s only sipping on because she doesn’t want to get drunk-drunk. It would mortify her to have to call Bellamy to take them home, even though he's done it a hundred times before. Something about being rescued from a truck pull makes it more embarrassing. Murphy had driven them, but he’s on his third beer already, and so thin she doesn’t think there’s any way he could have a decent alcohol tolerance, and anyway, given how much fun it looks like he’s having — since when does Murphy have fun at things? — he doesn’t look like he’s going to be ready to leave anytime soon.

The more she drinks, the more she thinks about Bellamy. Each time she gets this surge in her gut; butterflies, she thinks. She’d rather be there than here, safe in bed with him instead of out in the boonies with a bunch of rednecks, drinking shitty beer and not knowing how she’s going to get home.

Finn drinks too much too fast and Clarke loses track of Octavia. Before she knows it, her cup is empty and she’s feeling a little light-headed because she thought for some stupid reason there would be food here and there’s not, not even hot dogs or s'mores, so she didn’t eat dinner. Finn takes her by the hand and guides her away from the bonfire under the bleachers where it’s dark and no one can see them. He pushes her against one of the poles, a little too roughly so it hurts her spine, but she forces herself not to wince. She thought she liked the idea of him taking the lead, but now, a little buzzed and kind of grumpy, she thinks it’s obnoxious. He could have at least _asked._

He leans in close, his hand on her hip. He smells like chewing tobacco and cheap beer, will probably taste like it too. She remembers what Bellamy told her, that if he’s bad, he won’t wait for the right moment at all, and he doesn’t, just leans in without even gauging her reaction and kisses her. He presses his tongue forcefully against her lips until they open and he shoves his tongue in as far as he can. It’s sloppy and he tastes awful but she guesses she probably does too since she drank the same beer, and it’s really not _too_ bad, she thinks. At least his hands are politely on her waist, not going anywhere they shouldn’t. And he’s probably a little drunk (and so is she) so that affects things too. And maybe most people use a lot of tongue and Bellamy is just the exception to the rule. Maybe she’s supposed to like it like this. She does like that Finn appears to be enjoying himself, making little (slightly annoying) pleased noises in his throat, even if all he’s really doing is wiggling his tongue around in her mouth. And anyway, he really likes her, and she likes that he likes her, which is why she doesn’t push him away. Instead she puts her hands at the side of his neck like Bellamy taught her, and tries not to think about Bellamy.

It feels like hours but is actually only a couple minutes before Octavia interrupts with a terse, “It’s time to go.” Her arms are across her chest and she really does look cold. She’s wavering on her feet like she drank too much.

Clarke looks at her with an expression that she hopes doesn’t convey as much gratitude as she feels, at least not enough for Finn to notice.

“But Murphy drove,” Finn says, still crowding Clarke against the pole, hand clutching her as if to prevent her from escaping.

“We found a ride,” Octavia replies. This is what Clarke loves about her: no excuses, no apologies, no beating around the bush. Just, _We are leaving right the fuck now._ Clarke is immensely grateful Octavia is so social that she met someone willing to take them all the way home. If Clarke had been having a good time, she guarantees Octavia would have stuck it out, but Clarke must have been shooting off some telepathic interference that conveyed otherwise. 

“Sorry,” she says to Finn, sliding out from his grasp. She starts to take off his jacket but he stops her.

“Get it to me Monday,” he says with a hopeful, flirty smile.

She offers him one back. This is the Finn she likes, the flirty polite one who adores her and compliments her, not the one who chews tobacco and goes to truck pulls and kisses like a tentacle beast. “Okay. I’ll see you then.”

Octavia takes Clarke by the hand and drags her to the gravel pit that serves as a parking lot, where Bellamy’s truck is waiting.

“Has he been waiting here this whole time?” Clarke asks in a harsh whisper as if he can hear them.

“Not the _whole_ time. I texted him when the truck pull ended.”

“That was three hours ago.”

Clarke looks at the truck and then back where they’d come from, where Finn is still watching them — a bit of a distance, but a perfect line of sight to the underside of the bleachers. And it’s dark, so maybe Bellamy only saw shapes? Or maybe maybe he didn’t see anything. And there’s the fact that she’s a little drunk (which she knows he doesn’t approve of), and wearing Finn’s jacket, and she wants to fall into a crack in the asphalt and sink down into the earth.

They reach the truck and Octavia pulls the door open with a squeal. From this angle Clarke can’t see Bellamy’s expression. She climbs in first — she always, always sits in the middle for some reason, since the day Bellamy got his driver’s license.

“Have fun?” He turns the ignition and Octavia slams the door shut. Tires crunch under the gravel as they make it to back to the road.

Clarke stays silent. Octavia says, “No.”

“What about you, princess?”

“It was okay.”

“Looked like you were having a great time to me.”

She’s glad it’s dark because she can feel her face flush all the way down to her neck. How can she tell him it was awful and that she had a much better time during their totally un-fun, un-sexy kissing lesson? That she’s been touching herself every night while thinking of him? That, when Finn was out of her sight for long enough, she actually kind of forgot about he existed?

She sinks down into the seat and Octavia rests her head on Clarke’s shoulder. It’s a long drive home, so Clarke closes her eyes and curls into Finn’s jacket.

 

* * *

 

Clarke wakes up the next morning in Octavia’s bed. Octavia is still asleep, blankets tangled in her legs, mouth open and snoring a little. Clarke gets up quietly and goes to the kitchen where she finds Bellamy drinking a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper — the actual, literal newspaper which he reads every morning like an old man. He’s not wearing a shirt (god forbid he ever wear a shirt), just a pair of basketball shorts, and his contacts must not be in yet so he’s wearing his glasses, black plastic frames with lenses so thick, they make his eyes look big. Bellamy in glasses has been a rare sight since he got contacts a few years ago, and until now, she didn’t realize she missed it. There’s something so disarming about Bellamy in glasses, that he could have any flaw at all, physical or otherwise, let alone one so immediately apparent.

He doesn’t say anything as she passes in front of him and pulls down a box of frosted corn flakes from the top of the fridge. He doesn’t say anything when she drinks some milk straight from the carton before pouring it into the bowl (he hates when she does that). He doesn’t say anything when she sits across from him and starts crunching loudly, with her mouth open (he hates that too).

He’s hidden behind the paper. She can’t even see his face.

She waits until he picks up his mug and takes a sip, then she blurts out, “Finn used so much tongue I wanted to bite it off.”

He nearly spits out his coffee.

Finally, _finally_ he lowers the newspaper. As he’s wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand, he says, “What the fuck, Clarke.”

It all comes out in a rush: “I tried to like it but I didn’t and I didn’t know what I was doing wrong because I liked kissing you so much and you said I could talk to you about anything so that’s what I’m doing.”

“Look, you don’t have to try to like things. You’re allowed to just not like them. I guarantee you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Oh.” She thinks about it for a second. "So you didn't think I was bad at it?"

"You're definitely not bad at it."

She bites her lower lip to keep from smiling. It's the first time they've talked about it or acknowledged it since it happened.

“What if Finn always kisses like that?” she asks.

“Be patient with him. Communicate with him. He’s probably not as experienced as you think.”

“But he’s so...confident.”

“Sometimes guys grow up so uncontested they think they’re automatically great at everything because no one has ever told them otherwise. They don’t have the same shame and doubt women are brought up with, and it’s an unfair double-standard, but it’s true.”

“You’re not like that.”

“I was lucky enough to have a little sister and her bratty friend ragging on me most of my life.”

“Well. It was a tough job, but somebody had do it.”

He gives her a smile that makes the butterfly thing happen again her stomach, and goes back to reading the paper. Clarke continues crunching thoughtfully on her cereal.

Eventually Clarke says, “I still can’t figure out how to get myself off."

He doesn’t look up at her, just sighs deeply and folds the paper back down.

“And it’s not for lack of trying,” she adds. “I try so hard for so long that sometimes my fingers get pruny.”

“You just haven’t found what works for you yet.”

“How am I supposed to find what works for me? I’m limited to my hands and an imagination that only has one experience to draw from.” She realizes too late that she just admitted to thinking about him while she masturbates, but he doesn’t seem to put it together, or if he does, he has no discernible reaction.

“I don’t know,” he says. “You just have to keep at it.”

“How did you learn to get yourself off?”

The question seems to take him off-guard. The only other time she’s seen him get shy about something was when she was a sophomore and Bellamy had just graduated college. She and Octavia got drunk for the first time on Jaeger bombs at Zoe Monroe’s not-so-sweet sixteen, and it was the first time — but definitely not the last, seeing as how it’s kind of a tradition now — Bellamy had to come bail them out in the middle of the night. It was also the first time she realized Bellamy was, like, a _man,_ and not just the masculine counterpart of Octavia. He looked different now, all beefy and bearded, and, if she squinted, he was actually a little bit — and she was drunk, that had to count for something — attractive.

“You’re beautiful,” she said to him while they waited outside the bathroom of Zoe’s house, listening to Octavia puke.

He looked at her then as he’s looking at her now, surprised and confused, like he’s not used to having things turned back around on him: a compliment toward his appearance, an inquiry into his personal habits. Like he’s not used to being seen. Before he could reply, Octavia flung open the door and said, “I’m never drinking again,” which they knew even then was a lie.

Now, he takes off his glasses as if to clean them on his shirt, but, realizing he’s not wearing one, uses the tablecloth instead. “It’s different for guys. If there’s enough friction for long enough it’s kind of inevitable. But with girls, anything goes. Some are more sensitive, some less. Some can’t orgasm at all.”

The thought horrifies her.

“And that’s okay, too,” he adds quickly. “The orgasm isn’t the end-all-be-all of sexual experiences, even if most people think otherwise.”

She notices he didn’t actually answer her question about his masturbatory habits, so she turns it around on him again. “How do you know?”

“What do you mean ‘how do I know’?”

“I mean, is there some kind of textbook you’ve read, or did someone tell you, or…?” She lets the implication linger.

He glares at her. “I’ve had sex before, Clarke. Is that what you want to hear?”

“A lot of it? With a lot of people?”

He pauses, like he's thinking through an acceptable answer. “There’s no such thing as ‘a lot’ because that implies there’s an acceptable amount of sex or number of partners a person should have, and there’s not. You can have as much or as little sex as you want, with as many or as few people as you want.”

She sees the pattern now: every personal question she asks about him gets turned back around on her on the form of a lesson. It’s something, she sees now, he’s always done. She can’t believe she’s never noticed before how selfless he is. Sacrificial, giving, compassionate, yes. But selfless, as in, not necessarily a good thing, lacking a self entirely — it means he has a whole life she doesn’t know about, one where he’s had girlfriends or maybe boyfriends, multiple partners. There’s a whole part of his identity she’s never met before, because he doesn’t share it with her. He’s never brought anyone home, never mentioned dating. She just assumed he’d had sex before because he’s Bellamy and he knows everything, but she had never considered the implications of that assumption. There had to have been a first time. A first kiss. A first date. Bellamy may have been in love once. The thought sickens her as much as it saddens her, that he could have room in his heart to love anyone other than her and Octavia; that he may have had his own relationship problems and had no one to turn to with his questions or fears or heartache. She realizes with a force that feels like a physical punch — Bellamy has faced every challenge in his life blind, alone, and silent.

“You’re right,” she says, backing off. “I’m sorry.”

It sounds like she’s sorry for prying, inferring he’s had sex with too many people, but really she means: I’m sorry I can’t be there for you the way you are for me. I’m sorry you’ve had to do everything alone. I’m sorry you sacrificed your entire childhood to raise me because my mother refused. I’m sorry I don’t know you the way you deserve to be known. I’m sorry you have to be my brother and father and mentor and friend all at once. I’m sorry you’re everything to me and I’m just your responsibility. I’m sorry there’s no way I can ever repay you.

“It’s okay,” he says casually, sliding his glasses back on and picking up the paper again, like the burdens she puts on him are no trouble at all, like today is any other morning in his life, and not the day that Clarke realized what he really is to her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end note for warnings.
> 
> (How the end note warning works: If you're a person who appreciates being warned/knowing what will happen [I'm one of those people! I feel u], click on the link below to read the end note first, then scroll back up to read the chapter if you decide to proceed. I do this to keep a balance between people who don't want spoilers and people who do want warnings.)

On Monday, Clarke returns Finn's jacket in the hallway between second and third period. He takes it, and while he’s rushing to class, says, “Hey, I have a question to ask you at lunch, don’t let me forget.”

So she waits all morning in anticipation, barely able to concentrate. She gets to their table at lunch and takes a seat and makes sure to section out half of her lunch for him. He’s the first to sit down beside her. “Hey,” he says, a little breathless like he’d rushed to lunch. He puts an arm over the back of her chair, across her shoulders, takes an apple slice from her open Tupperware container and dips it in her yogurt. “So, I know dances are like totally dumb and whatever.” 

“I like them,” she replies, trying to remain as attractive as she can while eating a carrot stick, which is more difficult than she anticipated, so she puts the uneaten half back in the container.

“No, definitely, I mean, me too, sure. That’s why I wanted to see if, you know, you, like, wanted to.”

She tilts her head to the side and pretends she doesn’t understand. “Wanted to what?”

“Go. To homecoming.”

“I was planning on it.”

“Like, with me.”

“Ohh,” she says, finally understanding. She tries to play casual: “Yeah, that sounds good.”

He grins in victory, then points to the other half of her sandwich and says, “Are you gonna eat that?”

Later at lunch, Jasper comes by the table and asks Octavia to the dance, and Clarke thinks he’s maybe reaching a little above his pay grade, but Octavia, surprising everyone, agrees to it. Enthusiastically. In fact she's a giggling mess over it. He’s not even in their little circle of friends, except adjacently. Clarke is best friends with Octavia, who is on the cheerleading squad with Harper, who has been dating Monty since eighth grade, who is best friends with Jasper, and that rounds out their homecoming group.

Clarke, Octavia, and Harper go dress shopping in Easton on Saturday. Abby gives Clarke her American Express to buy whatever dress she wants. Aurora gives Octavia a twenty dollar bill, assuming, Clarke guesses, they would go thrifting in town and let Aurora tailor the dresses. Bellamy slips Octavia a fifty (rightly knowing they do not want to go thrifting, but wrongly the cost of homecoming dresses) which Octavia doesn’t want to accept, so Clarke ends up paying for Octavia’s dress, which is on sale for a hundred dollars because it’s blindingly hideous (traffic-cone orange with weird lacy frills and sequins, but she _loves_ it), and Octavia will just have to find a way to sneak the fifty back to Bellamy. Clarke’s dress was a hundred and forty, and when she tells her mom later she got her dress for under two-fifty (knowing she won’t even check her statement or ask to see the receipt), Abby thinks she got a bargain.

 

* * *

 

Friday before homecoming is the big game. Clarke still doesn’t know what makes it big, other than the parade beforehand, and that it falls the night before homecoming. The weather shifted quickly and now it’s kind of cold, and the leaves have all turned orange and brown, and everything smells like death. Clarke prefers summer.

At football games, the adults sit on the risers, but Clarke and her friends always huddle off to the side, near the concession stand. She’s been coming to football games since she was a freshman and has never actually watched one. She only glances at the field when the cheerleading squad comes out, so she can watch and applaud Octavia and Harper. It’s a little past half-time now; Finn and Murphy were standing with Clarke for a while, but they went off somewhere, to chew tobacco probably where they won’t get in trouble for it, and now she’s cold and alone and wonders if Octavia will notice if she leaves early.

“Where’s your jacket, princess?”

Clarke looks up. Bellamy is coming down the bleachers toward her. There’s not an exit over the side, so he hops over the railing and lands gracefully on his feet.

“Didn’t bring one,” she says.

“Your annual protest of cold weather?”

“Yes.”

He pulls off his leather jacket and hands it to her. He’s only wearing a henley underneath.

“I’m fine.”

“Just take it. You look miserable.”

She does, because otherwise she’d have to go to her car and and put the heat on full-blast just to feel her fingers again. The jacket is big and warm and perfect, and the sleeves are too long so she balls them in her fist.

“Where’s your boyfriend?” he asks. “Thought I saw him around here.”

“Keeping tabs on me, Blake?”

“Somebody has to.”

She gestures off to the side. “He’s somewhere over there with Murphy. Probably doing something he shouldn’t.”

“Classy move, leaving your girlfriend alone in the cold.”

“I’m not his girlfriend.”

“Not what it sounds like.”

“Why? Jealous?”

He snorts a derisive laugh and looks away, toward the football field where someone must have done something very impressive because the whole crowd stands up and cheers. When they quiet down again, Bellamy says, “You know I always told myself when I got out of Arcadia, I wouldn’t come back, wouldn’t be one of those people that cares about high school football, who stays in town their whole life and never does anything with it. And here I am. I live here, I work here, I come to every stupid game.”

She’s standing too close to him, soaking up his ridiculous body heat and letting him block her from the wind. She wants him to put his arm around her.

“Wonder why that is,” she says, glad for the cover of night and the distraction of the game. She tries not to think about the way his lips feel against hers, his strong hand on her waist, his cock pushing against her hip —

He looks at her, lips slightly parted as if to really answer, when Finn comes around the corner with a soft pretzel in either hand and Murphy with a cone of roasted almonds. Finn hands one of the pretzels to Clarke. “Did you see that play?”

“Yeah, it was great,” Clarke lies, pleased that he thought to buy her a pretzel, less pleased that she doesn’t actually like them, especially ones with mustard. But she eats it anyway to be polite.

Bellamy knows this and gives her an amused look, eyebrows raised as if to say, _Really? You’re going to eat that?_ She gives him a look back that she hopes conveys, _I’m trying to be grateful, okay. I’m not five anymore._ When she was younger, she wouldn’t eat anything with mustard on it, even if Bellamy scraped it off for her. Just the sight of it used to make her gag.

Finn seems to notice their small telepathic exchange — and that Clarke is wearing his jacket and standing too close to him — and looks back and forth between them. Clarke realizes Finn only knows Bellamy as the rest of the school knows him, as Mr. Blake the hot substitute, so she can see why he might be confused.

“He’s Octavia’s brother,” Clarke explains.

“Ohh,” Finn says. “That’s why you guys have the same last name. And, like, look exactly alike.”

Bellamy ignores him. “I’m beat,” he says to Clarke, “I’m gonna head out. My phone is on if you need anything.”

Clarke starts to shrug out of the jacket, but Bellamy says, “Just get it to me when you come home tonight.”

A blush rushes to her face at the implication, when the truth is that Octavia invited her to spend the night after the game so they could prep for the dance early tomorrow. Still, he called his own house her home, and she gets a funny feeling in her stomach, even though it’s been true for most of her life.

When he’s out of earshot, Murphy tosses an almond in his mouth and says, “Doesn’t he have anything better to do?”

“Excuse me?” Clarke says.

“Don’t you think it’s sad, a grown man like him, still hanging out at his old high school?”

Finn, seeing Clarke’s expression, steps between them and says to her, “C’mon, he’s just kidding.”

“I don’t think he is. I think he’s implying something about one of my friends.”

“I’m not implying anything, “ Murphy says. “Tell me, Griffin, does he fuck anyone his own age, or is he only into teenagers?”

Clarke pushes Finn aside and smashes the pretzel, mustard side out, into Murphy’s face. It sticks for a second before sliding down onto his shirt, a trail of yellow and salt in its wake.

“If I hear you say anything bad about Bellamy again, I’ll plant weed in your locker and make sure you get expelled.” It’s not an empty threat; he got busted twice last year and her mom volunteers on the school board as the health expert — not to be more involved in Clarke’s life, of course, but to be "part of the Arcadia community,” which actually means it makes her practice look good.

They both stare at her, stunned, and she turns on her heel and heads toward the parking lot.

 

* * *

 

The morning of homecoming, Clarke wakes up with a pit of dread welling inside her. Octavia is curled toward the wall and has stolen all the covers. In the kitchen, Clarke can hear Bellamy fixing a pot of coffee, the steady percolation. Then, the creaking of a chair, the loud crinkle of the newspaper as he unfolds it. She can see him in her mind’s eye — pajama bottoms, messy hair, no shirt, scratching his chest. His favorite Florida Keys mug, even though he’s never been. Cell phone left in his room on the charger, because he only carries it around with him when Clarke and Octavia aren’t in his immediate vicinity.

She wants to get up and join him, tell her how much she’s freaking out about tonight. Finn hasn’t kissed her since the truck pull, but she knows he’ll want to do it again tonight. Maybe more. It's like she only liked the mystery of the crush, wondering whether or not he actually liked her, if he wanted to go to homecoming with her, and now that her curiosity is satisfied, she wants to move on. She wonders how upset everyone would be if she told them she was sick, and decided to stay home with Bellamy and watched bad horror movies on Netflix.

No, she thinks, she shouldn’t be feeling like this. She’s just being a coward is all. Just nerves. She should be _excited._ She’s going to dress up pretty and eat a lot of food and take some sips from Octavia’s flask and dance until she has to take her shoes off. A cute boy likes her; she should be happy. Gracious. Eager to return his affections. And anyway, she’s been to every school dance and she always has a good time. There’s no reason tonight will be any different. There’s no reason she has to put her worries on Bellamy’s shoulders for the thousandth time in her life. It’s early still. She’s just making a big deal of things. She’ll be fine, she tells herself. She’ll have fun.

 

* * *

 

By ten, she’s huddled on the couch in the living room watching YouTube updo and makeup tutorials with Octavia. Harper comes over around noon, a picnic basket in hand carrying a vegan feast her parents put together for them. They eat and decide on their hairstyles, and from then on it’s a flurry of activity. The makeup station is in Aurora’s room because she has a big vanity, and the hair station is in Octavia’s bedroom. Octavia is blasting an early 2000s club mix playlist so loudly the ground is throbbing and they have to shout over the noise. Bellamy’s been holed up in his bedroom since they woke up.

Around four, when they’re scrambling to finish, Clarke is trying to put on her dress in the bathroom, but Octavia calls her for help at the hair station, so she opens the door to sneak across the hall at the exact time Bellamy comes out of his bedroom too, and he gets an eyeful of Clarke in a strapless black bra and lacy thong.

“Oh my god,” he says, and claps a hand over his eyes. “Will you put on some fucking clothes?”

“You know not to come out during pre-dance festivities.”

“I need to take a piss!”

Clarke puts her hands on her hips and waits silently until he lowers his hand, and when he sees her again, he says, “Fuck,” and squeezes his eyes shut. “Will you _go away please.”_

“Why?” she asks, taking a step toward him. There’s no way Octavia can hear them over the music. “Like what you see, Blake?”

He opens his eyes and stares her down, as if to say,  _Is that how you want to play this?_  And when Clarke doesn't move, he accepts the challenge, lets his eyes wander all the way down her body and back up. Only a moment ago she was teasing him about looking, and now that he actually is, she wants to hide. She stays still, though, and can’t help the chill that runs up her spine.

He swipes her hair away from her face, behind her ear, and leans in closer. “You know what you do to me.”

Her heart stops. She flirts with him all the time but he never flirts _back._

One corner of his mouth twitches up in a smug little victory smirk. His hand is cupping her face, his thumb swiping gently across her cheek. “What’s the matter, princess? Didn’t think I could play along?”

She opens her mouth to respond, but Octavia shouts, “Clarke, help me, my hair is stuck in my zipper!”

“I gotta…” Clarke says, taking a step back, and darts into Octavia’s room.

 

* * *

 

Clarke’s dress is baby blue and strapless with a flowy skirt. She thinks she looks a little like Elsa from _Frozen._ When she finishes her hair and makeup — Harper and Octavia are still working at it — she goes to retrieve her phone where it’s charging in the living room and finds Bellamy on the couch reading a book.

“How do I look?” she asks, and does a little spin for him, hoping he’ll look at her like he did before.

He glances up and gives her a once-over, not as intense as earlier, because Harper and Octavia are running back and forth in the hallway like mad.

“I prefer what’s underneath,” he says.

“You’re killing me.”

“You set yourself up for it.”

“You’re not supposed to take the bait,” she hisses, in case anyone can hear them. Aurora asked them to turn down the music so she could nap. “You’re supposed to be older and wiser and more mature.”

He turns the page like he’s actually still reading. “All I’m hearing is, ‘I can dish it out, but I can’t take it.’”

Harper rushes in wearing her dress (silver halter top) but no shoes. She smiles at them as she dashes past them into the kitchen.

“I’m surprised you’re not chaperoning,” Clarke says to make it look like they were talking about something else. Bellamy chaperoned prom last year, mostly to keep Octavia from getting shitfaced.

“Offered to, but they said they had it covered.”

Clarke’s phone beeps and she pulls it off the charger to check it. It’s Monty in the group chat saying he’s leaving to pick up Finn and Jasper. Harper exits the kitchen with boutonniere in hand and smiles at them again as she passes.

“You sure you’re going to be okay tonight?” Bellamy asks, still staring at the page in front of him like he’s pretending not to care.

“Yeah,” she says, then adds, “I mean, no. I don’t know.”

Finally, he rests the book — what looks like a boring wartime memoir, and not even like World War II or anything, but the Korean War, which Clarke didn’t really know was a thing — across his chest and takes her hand, runs his thumb over the back of it. She wishes she could climb onto the couch with him and ask him to read to her like he used to when she was a kid. Even if it’s boring, she likes hearing his voice.

“I’ll cover for you if you don’t want to go,” he says. “Stay in, order pizza, watch some shitty horror movies with me.”

She swallows hard, tries to smile but fails. It almost physically hurts that his suggestion is exactly what she was thinking too. “No, I should go. I only get to be a teenager once, right?”

“I’ll be here if you need me.”

“I know,” she says, and squeezes his hand.

 

* * *

 

The boys show up around five, all in suits with little clear boxes for their corsages. Aurora’s hands shake a lot so she makes Bellamy take their picture in the front yard. Finn is wearing a grey suit that’s a little too big for him and Jasper has an orange tie with a pattern of gummy bears on it, which actually matches Octavia’s dress perfectly, goggles perched proudly atop his head. He somehow found an orange corsage, too. Octavia seems thrilled by it. Harper and Monty look like they could be maid of honor and best man at somebody’s wedding.

They take one serious picture and then several stupid ones: Octavia being given a piggyback ride by Jasper, posing like the opening to _Friends,_ finger mustaches — it goes on for about a half hour, until Harper looks at her phone and says, “Oh shoot, we don’t want to miss our reservations.”

They all pile into Monty’s Jeep, Clarke squished in the back with Finn in the middle, Jasper on his other side, and Octavia on Jasper's lap. Harper sits shotgun and fiddles with the music while Jasper shouts out song names, and Monty tells them they will _not_ be listening to Eminem, so Octavia starts singing “The Real Slim Shady” and Jasper and Finn join in, to Monty’s dismay. While they’re driving away, Clarke looks out the window at Bellamy, who isn’t looking back, but flipping through the pictures on his phone and showing them to his mom. The moment is nothing, not one that anyone else in the car will remember. To Clarke, though, it feels like a major crossroads, like if she’d only stayed home, her life might be totally different, like the tendrils of tonight will take root, and sink into her life for years to come. A rock dropped in a river whose ripples expand out indefinitely. It’s because of this feeling that the image of Bellamy right then strikes her deeply as one that she’ll remember for the rest of her life: jeans, a faded Avett Brothers t-shirt from a concert he’s never mentioned attending. The soft black hoodie with torn-out thumb holes that she sometimes wears if he leaves it out, tossed over a chair or on the hook by the door. Hair messy in the wind, getting in his eyes; his beard needing a trim. No shoes, feet bare in the cold grass.

 

* * *

 

They eat dinner at Olive Garden, where Clarke and Finn split linguini alfredo but Clarke doesn’t eat much because she doesn’t want to bloat and feel uncomfortable in her dress. Jasper pours two packets of sugar on his spaghetti and Octavia laughs so hard that tears spring to her eyes. At one point, she almost shoots Diet Coke out of her nose. Jasper orders calamari because Octavia hasn’t tried it before, and she gags when she does. It goes almost completely uneaten. He also orders a cocktail and the server laughs at him. Then, in vengeance, on their way out, he takes the entire bowl of Andes mints from the lobby and pours them into Octavia’s clutch.

Back in the Jeep on the way to the dance, Octavia breaks out her flask that she keeps in a garter on her thigh and passes it around. Clarke takes a longer pull than everyone else and coughs a little when she passes it to Finn. Jasper pulls out a bag of edibles he got when he was in California this summer. They’re sour gummies, and when Clarke goes to take one, Finn says, “Maybe we should split it. I think it’s more than enough.”

“Don’t be boring, Finn,” Octavia says from her spot on Jasper’s lap.

“He’s right,” Jasper says. “Half is plenty.”

Clarke really wants to get obliterated tonight, so she looks Finn dead in the eye and puts the whole thing in her mouth. It tastes like regular candy but with a skunky marijuana aftertaste. Jasper plucks the bag out of her hands. “That’s all for now. Shop’s closed,” he says, and tucks it back into his pocket.

Nothing happens for a really long time. She starts feeling a little tipsy by the time they get inside the gymnasium, which has been repurposed with streamers and balloons and colorful lights. The popular people are already in the middle of the dance floor grinding on each other. Octavia, being a popular person herself, drags Clarke into the dead center of it.

Clarke loses track of things after a few songs. She vaguely remembers waiting in line to have her picture taken, and wanting to pose with Finn dipping her and a rose between her teeth, but they don't have a rose, so she bites her finger. She remembers drinking some punch and being uncomfortably sweaty. She remembers closing her eyes and convincing herself Bellamy is just in the corner, making sure no shenanigans are happening. She remembers going to the bathroom and staring at herself in the mirror for five minutes, wondering if her reflection is really even her, or if all mirrors are just windows to an alternate dimension, what feels at the time like an unspeakably profound concept. And then she remembers feeling so overwhelmed by a baffling combination of grief and desire and sensory overload that she stumbles out of the gym into the cold night air. What she doesn’t remember is pulling out her phone from her clutch and texting Bellamy, _I wish I stayed home with you._

She sits down on the curb and the light from her phone seems like it’s swimming. She should have eaten more than a few bites of pasta. She looks up into the distance and thinks she sees space whales, but they’re only clouds drifting across the sky. She wonders if the ground is hungry and wants to eat her.

 _Not having fun?_ Bellamy texts back with the slanty-face emoji.

 _I miss you,_ she replies instead of answering. Then, _My whole life is going to be different now. I can feel it._

_What do you mean? You need me to come get you?_

Before she can respond, Finn comes out and says, “There you are." Time does a funny skipping thing and suddenly she’s in the back of Monty’s Jeep and Finn has his tongue in her mouth.

She’s not sure if it really happens, or if her imagination goes a little out of control, but she swears she remembers Finn saying something like, “You know what they call you at school, right?”

“No. They call me things?” she asks, or maybe doesn't.

“They call you Elsa. As in, the ice queen.”

She doesn’t understand.

“Everyone thinks you’re like, a prude. Stuck up. They all told me not to go after you, that no matter how hard I tried, you wouldn’t budge.” He boops her nose. “Now look at you, all hot and bothered for me like some kind of slut.”

“Hey,” she says. “That’s not nice.”

Also, it doesn’t make sense. Nobody’s ever asked her out before Finn, so she couldn’t have said no to them. She thinks she says as much, but she's not sure.

Then he reaches his hand under her skirt. Or maybe she takes it and guides it there, to prove a point. His fingers snake up between her legs and start rubbing roughly at her crotch, and then he slips under the fabric of her underwear and shoves his middle finger inside her. She gasps in pain but he interprets it as pleasure and says something stupid, like, “That’s right, feels good, doesn’t it? The slut likes that, doesn’t she?”

She thinks she does, actually, because she’s too drunk and high to care about much of anything. It just feels good to touch and be touched, to want and be wanted.

She doesn’t have the words to tell him it feels bad-good, because she can’t even articulate it herself. There are some parts of it she’s into, like when he bumps into her clit seemingly by accident like he doesn't know what it does or even that it's there; and some that she wishes he would tone down a little, like his arrhythmic punching movements into her cunt. But she can’t say a word because his tongue is too far down her throat.

This should be fun, she thinks. She should be having fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for extremely dubious consent: Clarke gets drunk and high. Finn gaslights her, but she can't remember if it's real or not. Then he fingers her, and it hurts a little, and she doesn't really enjoy it.


	4. Chapter 4

The next day, Clarke has to shower twice: once to get all the hairspray and glitter out of her hair, and again because she still feels dirty and hungover and maybe still a little high. At noon, she spaces out and drives to the Blakes’ house and lets herself inside. Octavia’s Camry isn’t in the driveway and Aurora works on Sundays, but Bellamy’s truck is in the garage. She doesn’t remember why she wanted to come here; it’s like her body switched on autopilot. Now she’s standing in the middle of the kitchen staring into space. Video game noises, gunshots and team chat, come from down the hall. She can’t remember where Octavia is supposed to be. Something to do with cheerleading, probably. Or maybe she’s still with Jasper.

She looks at her phone for the first time all day. Three texts from Bellamy: _Clarke??_ And then, _Are you sure you’re ok?_ Then another, an hour later at two a.m., _O says she’s staying the night at your place which isn’t like her. You’re not answering your texts which isn’t like you. Something’s going on._

The text thread below is from Harper. She said around one-thirty, _Let me know you got inside okay!!_ And Clarke replied three minutes later, having no memory of it, _Safe inside thank yuo_ and the shoe, pumpkin, nail polish, and shooting star emojis.

She puts her phone face-down on the counter, helps herself to a can of RC Cola and a cookie from the jar. Octavia must have spent the night with Jasper somewhere. Something about that bothers her, but she can’t put her finger on it. Jasper was the one who interrupted Clarke and Finn in the Jeep before anything got too heavy, nothing more than fingering and making out, which really wasn’t too bad, from what she remembers. He said something crass from outside the window, like, “Oh, don’t let me interrupt. I’ll just wait here,” which was when Finn finally pulled his finger out of her with a frustrated sigh and unlocked the door. Time did the skipping thing again and suddenly Octavia was there too, and Harper and Monty, and they were driving. They wanted to go to Waffle House, but Clarke wanted to go home. She thinks she fell asleep on Finn’s shoulder, and then Monty pulled up at her house, and Finn offered to go inside with her. She remembers Octavia telling him to “stay in the damn car and let her go to bed,” but that didn’t deter him. He tried to leave with her, and said, “At least let me walk her to the door." That was when Harper — sweet, gentle Harper — said, “Quit being a creep, Finn. She didn’t invite you inside,” at the same time Octavia said, “I will stomp you to death with my hooves.” Finn was so taken aback that Clarke used the opportunity to get out of the Jeep and shut the door, and Monty sped off — either because he really wanted Waffle House or because he didn’t want Finn following her, she doesn’t know — and that was why Harper had to text to see if she got inside okay.

Clarke didn’t even make it to her bedroom. She fell asleep on the couch, and woke up with bobby pins jabbing her in the scalp, the underwire of her bra poking her arm, and her mouth tasting like hairspray and booze.

It was a bad night, she thinks. Then: no, it was a fine night, but she had too much to drink and shouldn’t have eaten the entire edible. It was her fault for getting trashed. Bellamy is always telling her she shouldn’t push herself past her limits, but in her defense, she doesn’t know what her limits are until she crosses them. So, now she knows: half an edible, and don't mix it with alcohol. She dusts her hands off over the sink from the cookie residue and looks around the cramped kitchen, which is in more disarray than usual, being generally spotless thanks to Bellamy’s neat-freak habits. Last night wouldn’t have happened the way it did if Bellamy had been there, she thinks. She wouldn’t have gone off the deep end like that. She would have had no reason to. There are a few dishes in the sink so she rinses them off and puts them in the dishwasher. Bellamy wouldn’t have said all the mean things Finn said, or the things she thinks he said. It might have been part of the dream she had after she passed out on the couch. She takes the rag on the sink and wipes down the countertops, puts away a bag of chips that somebody (Octavia) left open, so they don’t get stale. Bellamy wouldn’t have made her feel like she had to shower twice. If Bellamy were her age, they could have gone to homecoming together, and she wouldn’t even need to waste time on boys like Finn. She folds up the newspaper from the table — open to the Life section, which means Bellamy is done reading it — and tosses it in the recycling bin under the sink.

She thinks of him in his room, alone, just on the other side of the house, and somehow still so far out of reach.

Then something happens. Something breaks inside of her and suddenly she struggles to pull in a breath. She grips the countertop with one hand and puts the other to her chest, feels her heart fluttering and pounding away under her palm as if trying to escape. An unexpected sob bubbles out of her throat. But she’s not sad. She doesn’t feel anything. The tears follow a few seconds later, a tumble of sobs gurgling out of her like vomit. Her legs turn to liquid beneath her and she lowers herself to the tile, her back to the cabinets, knees to her chest and her forehead on top of them. Something is happening to her. Something is wrong. It must be the edible, she thinks, a bad reaction. She needs to call 911. She needs to —

Distantly she hears the opening of a door and the rush of heavy footsteps toward her. Bellamy’s bad knee cracks as he crouches down beside her, then his hand is on her shoulder and he’s saying, “Clarke? What’s wrong?”

She can’t look at him. Not right now. She squeezes her eyes shut and puts her hands over her head, the way they teach you in tornado drills.

“Are you hurt?”

She cries quietly into the cocoon of her legs.

“Clarke,” he says again. “Look at me.”

She shakes her head.

“What the hell happened last night? Where’s O?”

“Don’t be mad at me." She's not sure it’s even intelligible. “Please.”

His voice is softer now: “I’m not. I’m not mad. I’m just worried.”

“Leave me alone,” she adds, for no reason other than embarrassment — she hasn’t cried like this in front of him since she was a kid. She cried all the time, ten times more than Octavia, who barely cried at all, even when she got hurt. Clarke’s habit of bursting into tears at the slightest provocation always seemed to freak Bellamy out. _Quit being such a crybaby,_ he used to say. He’d tease her with it: crybaby, crybaby. Always such a crybaby. She never took it to heart, though, maybe because how fondly he said it, or how deeply she understood his adoration. It was an attempt to cheer her up usually, to get her to wipe her eyes and go, _Shut up, I am not,_ and anyway, it always came after an inspection of what was wrong to make sure it wasn’t serious, and a hug.

He sits down beside her and puts an arm around her shoulders. “I’m here. It’s okay.”

She unwinds herself enough to lean into him, her bent legs over his thighs, her head tucked into his shoulder. A tear drips down the bridge of her nose and falls onto his bare chest. She can only see his stomach, the crease it makes when he sits down. The little mole by his navel. Trail of dark hair down the dead center of him. Red flannel pajama bottoms today. She picks up the drawstring and busies herself with it, her hands shaking. Rolls it up. Lets it fall. Her racing heart begins to slow down. Nothing bad happens around Bellamy. She rolls it up again. Lets it fall. She focuses on her breathing, in four counts, out four counts. Rolls it up. Lets it fall.

“Did something happen last night?” he asks once she's settled.

Her voice is a ragged rasp, sounds small to her own ears: “Not really.”

“Then where’s Octavia?”

“At my house.”

“No she isn’t.”

Clarke doesn’t answer. She doesn’t know why Octavia would lie about it; she never lies to Bellamy. They have a pact. Blake family honesty: no secrets, no lies. The truth, always, even when it hurts. When Aurora got sick, for the first few years she kept her diagnosis (breast cancer) and subsequent prognoses to herself. She said later she didn’t want to worry them. Bellamy and Octavia had no idea why some days Aurora couldn’t leave her room, why they ran out of food sometimes, why no one woke them up to go to school. Bellamy was just a teenager, Octavia barely old enough to understand. It blew up when she had a surgery she never told them about, an outpatient one that shouldn't have taken more than a couple hours, but there were complications and she didn't come home. After that, Bellamy made them promise to start being honest with each other about everything, at all costs, even if it means taking a bad call at a bad time, even if the news is ugly. Since then, the cancer has come and gone three more times, and after each one, she has a harder time getting her strength back.

But since their pact doesn’t extend to Clarke, she stays silent about Octavia’s whereabouts.

“I’m not expecting you to out her,” Bellamy says, “but do you at least know where she is?”

“Not technically.”

“Jasper’s?”

She doesn’t answer.

He lets out a long exhale. “Okay, I’ll deal with her later. Are you upset with her? That she’s with Jasper?”

“No.” She’s never had a fight with Octavia in her life, and she doesn't plan to start one about Jasper Jordan, of all things.

“Does it have to do with Finn?”

When she hesitates, he asks, “Did he hurt you?”

“No.”

“You can tell me if he did.”

“He — no, he didn’t.”

“Then what did he do?”

“He didn’t hurt me, but what he did happened to hurt.”

“So he hurt you." She can hear the anger in his voice already.

“It’s not his fault. He didn’t know I’m —” A virgin who can’t even use tampons.

“He did something without talking to you first.”

“Oh, he talked plenty,” she says. “We were...not in our right minds.”

“Clarke.” Urgent now. Definitely angry. “What did he do?”

“Nothing.” Pressure builds behind her eyes; they start to water again. “Nothing. It wasn’t him. It was me. There’s something wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“There is. He did things to me and I didn’t like it at all, and he tried so hard, but he couldn’t — he couldn’t —”

“Couldn’t what?”

“Get me off.”

Bellamy is silent, but she can feel him press his lips to the top of her head, hold her more closely to his side.

“I thought eventually it would feel good if I just let it go on for a while, so I didn’t tell him to stop. And now today I just keep thinking about how I should have told him to stop, and I feel — I feel so gross and broken and — I was drunk and high and I don’t know what parts are even real.”

“It’s really, really hard to orgasm when you’re drunk and high. One or the other, maybe, but the two don’t mix.”

“That’s not the point. I can’t even get myself off. And every day I’m walking around with all this — this tension built up in me like I’m about to explode. I feel like I’m going crazy. And there’s this perfectly nice boy who likes me and I’m just too broken for him and when he realizes it, he’s not going to like me anymore.”

“It’s okay,” he says into her hair. “There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s okay you didn’t tell him to stop, and it’s okay you didn’t like it. None of that makes you gross or broken.”

She pulls away from him and wipes her cheeks and nose with her sleeve. “Can I tell you something really embarrassing?”

“Sure.”

“While it was happening, I kept thinking about you. I kept thinking, ‘It wouldn’t be like this with Bellamy. I’m never so nervous with him that I’d have to get wasted just to let him touch me.’”

“Clarke…” It’s just her name, but what it sounds like is, _You can’t say shit like that._

“I know. You said we can’t. But I wanted you to know I always feel safe with you.”

“Which is exactly why we can’t do anything. I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

“Is it really taking advantage if I want it? If it’ll help me? If you don’t get anything in return?”

“Yes. In these situations that’s exactly what it means.”

She has no idea what _these situations_ are, or how he would know the rules of them.

“I just want to have a good experience to counteract the bad one,” she says.

“How do you know it’ll be a good experience?”

“Because it’s you.”

She meets his gaze, defiant, and he’s not looking at her like she’s his kid sister’s best friend — dismissive, irritated, constantly obligated to protect and take care of her — but in a different way, a new way, one that blossoms hope in her chest. Like an equal, maybe. An adult. Someone he would want to spend time with voluntarily. Someone he might want to touch and be touched by.

“We’ll see,” he says. She wants to cheer. “But not right now. Right now you need to eat something.”

“How do you know?” It’s true. She feels ravenous.

He pushes himself gracefully to standing and offers a hand to her. She takes it and stands too. “Because you’re always hungry after you cry.”

She sits at the kitchen table while he makes an omelette for her with extra cheese, plus three strips of bacon and some toast. She always likes when he makes omelettes because she can’t make them herself, and he does a cool flip thing in the pan where it looks like the eggs are going to fall out but they never do. While he cooks, she tells him about the rest of the night, Olive Garden and the calamari and stealing the mints, her stupid pose with Finn, and how she ate the whole edible —

“Rookie move,” he says.

“Like you’ve ever done a drug in your life, Mr. Summa Cum Laude.”

He raises an eyebrow at her.

— and by this point she’s on a roll so she says, “And then I have this, like, crisis, panicking in the bathroom for no good reason —” There was a very good reason, and that reason was missing Bellamy, but she doesn’t say that. “— so I go outside and sit down and that’s when I text you. But then Finn comes and finds me and takes me to Monty’s Jeep, and like — sorry, I’ll spare you the details.”

“Thank you.”

“I can’t tell if I dreamed this or if it really happened but he said everyone at school thinks I’m a prude? And that they call me an ice queen behind my back. And he kept calling me a slut, but not like in a mean way, like he thought I would think it was sexy or something, but it just confused me. How can I be a prude _and_ a slut?”

Bellamy sets a steaming plate down in front of her along with a glass of orange juice.

“Oh my god, thank you —” she says, and stops when she sees the look on his face, which she knows intimately as his I’m-going-to-fucking-murder-someone face, the same one he used to get walking Clarke and Octavia home from elementary school, where he often got in a number of scrapes and fights because of all the awful things kids used to say about the Blakes — at first, that they were poor, which Clarke never really understood. Their house might only be a little bungalow by a strip mall, but it’s plenty big for the three of them and very cozy, compared to Clarke’s big lonely mansion of a house. Later, kids threw around a lot of speculation and rumors about Aurora’s occupation, which again, didn’t make sense to Clarke because Aurora is a seamstress, and only much later did she realize that seamstresses don’t usually work overnight hours.

“What?” Clarke asks. “Did I say something wrong?”

Bellamy sits down across from her. “No.”

“Then what’s that look for?”

“Nothing.”

“Bellamy.”

“Eat your food.”

“Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”

He takes a deep breath in, pauses, and then he says, “I don’t appreciate him speaking to you like that." While the words come out calmly, she sees very plainly the anger underneath.

So she backs down and cuts into the omelette.

“You don’t deserve to be treated that way,” he says.

“It’s my fault, I —”

“No,” he says firmly. “It’s not your fault.”

When Clarke doesn’t say anything, he adds, “You’re going to stop seeing him, right?”

“What? No. I’m not going to dismiss someone I like just because we had one rough night. It was bad, yeah, but it wasn’t _that_ bad.”

“Fifteen minutes ago you were having a panic attack on my kitchen —” He stops abruptly, rubs a hand over his face. “You know what, never mind. We don’t have to talk about this right now.”

He lets her eat in silence and she decides not to tell him about Finn trying to follow her into her house. She can feel him thinking, his chin in his palm, staring at a spot on the table as if working through a difficult problem.

“Okay,” he says eventually, a new resolve settled over him. “I’ll teach you how to get yourself off.”

She sits up straight. “Really?”

“But I need you to really think about it. It sounds like being scared is a big part of your problem, and I don’t want to do anything to make that worse.”

“I have thought about it.” She glances down, pushes egg around with her fork. “It’s all I think about.”

Another brief you-can’t-say-shit-like-that look. Then: “Alright. Ground rules.” He holds up one finger. “This happens exactly once, and you can’t tell anyone about it. Not even Octavia. I know she said she was fine with kissing, but I know she absolutely wouldn’t be fine with anything else, so just — keep it between us.”

This is huge, that he’s willing to hide something like this from Octavia. Then again, she reasons, Octavia lied to him, too, and even though he hasn’t expressed any hurt by it, she knows he is. Knows there’s probably a battle in his mind between “honesty at all costs” and “sometimes teenage girls lie about things, it’s no big deal.”

He holds up a second finger. “You do exactly what I say and you don’t ask for anything more. I’m not going to touch you, and you’re not going to touch me. You’re going to do all the work while I tell you what to do. The point of this is to show you what it feels like and how to do it on your own. That’s it.”

She swallows her last bite of omelette and pushes her plate away. “Permission to ask a question?”

“Granted.”

“Will you kiss me again?”

“Were you not listening when I said not to ask for anything more?”

“We’ve already done it, so it’s not _more.”_

“God, you’re such a brat.”

“Is that a no?”

“It’s a we’ll-see, and stop using your powers of logic for evil.”

“Yes, sir,” she says, and even though it was kind of sarcastic, he gives her a _look_ in response, a dark one, the one he’d been giving her when he flirted with her yesterday.

“Can we start now?” she asks.

 

* * *

 

In Bellamy’s bedroom, she shimmies out of her leggings and climbs into bed with him. She’s wearing a t-shirt dress so she’s still covered, and not her best pair of underwear, plain and pink with a little bowtie, but at least they’re not embarrassing like the granny panties she sometimes wears on her period. He covers her with his blanket. They’re lying exactly how they were for their kissing lesson and Clarke waits dutifully for his instructions.

“First,” Bellamy says, “what do you usually do to turn yourself on?”

“I — what?”

“To get yourself going.”

“I don’t know.”

“So you just go straight from not touching yourself to touching yourself.”

“Pretty much.”

“Okay, well, your options are thinking about something hot, watching something hot, or feeling yourself up.”

She got _really_ worked up last time, so she asks, “Can one of the options be kissing you?”

“You won’t be able to replicate that on your own.”

“But I’ll be able to think about it, and that’ll be my something hot.”

“Have you ever considered becoming a lawyer?”

“Bellamy.”

“Okay, fine,” he says, and tilts her chin toward him and kisses her, lightly at first, neatly, as if a kiss could be clean and organized. It’s so different than Finn’s chaotic over-enthusiasm and aggression. But she’s also learned a thing or two about chaotic over-enthusiasm and aggression in the past few weeks, and uses it to pull Bellamy closer, press her mouth to him harder, and lick his bottom lip.

He pushes her away and asks, “Where did you learn that?”

“Finn,” she says, like it’s obvious.

“Shouldn’t have asked. Can we maybe not talk about him for a bit?”

“Why? Jealous?” she asks again.

He makes a frustrated noise and kisses her again, this time without hesitation, matching her roughness, biting and sucking at her lips. His hips are too far away so she can’t tell if he’s hard or not, but she takes her chances and turns toward him, hooks her leg over him, and — there, she can feel it. Not as hard as last time yet, but definitely at-attention. She shifts her hips in part to seek the pressure of his thigh and also to rub against his erection and get him harder.

Unlike Finn where two minutes felt like two hours, kissing Bellamy seems to stop time itself. She puts her hands all over him, not just in his hair but on his neck, over his shoulders, down his chest, up his bare back and then scratches her nails down, grabs a handful of his ass.

He arches away. “Fuck, Clarke. What’s gotten into you?”

“I also get really horny when I cry. Is that weird?”

“Yeah, kinda.”

He reaches behind him and plucks her hand off his ass. “Be good.”

“That’s boring.”

“What happened to you? You went from sweet and shy to demonic in like a month.”

“A lot can happen in a month.”

“Well cool it off a little.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“Is it because you like it?”

“You want to interrogate me, princess, or do you want an orgasm?”

She pouts. “Orgasm.”

“That’s what I thought. Are you ready? Or do you need to keep going?”

What a question, she thinks. It doesn’t seem fair that she can’t take both. “I’m ready,” she says reluctantly, and rolls onto her back.

“Okay, so just — do what you normally do,” he says.

She reaches under the covers, slips her hand into her underwear, and strokes herself. She’s surprised how wet she is from just a few minutes of kissing Bellamy when, with Finn, she was totally dry. She slicks her fingers, soaked and swollen and sensitive, and curls one into herself, starts moving it in and out shallowly. It doesn’t really feel like anything, like when your back itches and you can’t quite reach it so you’re just scratching the non-itchy skin around it. A feeling like any other feeling, but kind of close to the feeling she wants.

“See? Nothing.”

“It’s only been a few seconds,” he says. “You can’t expect yourself to just shoot off like a rubber band.”

A lot of the stuff he says makes sense, and she feels like she already knows it, but she’s just never consciously thought about it before.

“What else should I be doing?” she asks.

He takes her other hand and puts it on her breast. “Have you tried this?”

“Not really. It seems...cheesy.”

“Well, try it.”

She squeezes her boob but the padding of her bra is too thick to really feel anything. “Can I just take it off?”

He lets out an exasperated sigh.

“You told me to try it. I can’t try it if I can’t feel anything.”

“Just the bra, okay, not the shirt.”

She sits up and reaches behind herself to unclasp her bra, lets the straps fall down her shoulders and then pulls the whole thing through the sleeve of her shirt. She catches Bellamy’s eyes on her, his lips slightly parted, and she looks down to see her hardened nipples exposed through the thin fabric of the shirt.

“Try it again,” he says, training his eyes toward the ceiling.

She doesn’t bother putting her hand under the shirt, just squeezes her breast over top of it with one hand, slides her other back into her underwear.

“Not like that,” he says.

“Like what?”

“Not the whole thing, just the nipple. Try, like, pinching.”

So she finds her nipple and pinches it between her thumb and forefinger and — oh.

“Now pull a little, or twist.”

She does that too and gasps at how good it feels, like a line has been tugged from her chest to her cunt, a shockwave over her whole body. She can’t believe she never thought to try this.

“That’s right, there you go,” he says, his voice lower now, and when she opens her eyes he’s watching her, and that alone sends another shockwave through her, being seen by him, being seen doing the things she’s doing to herself.

“Better, but not — it feels good, but nothing’s really happening.”

He tugs the covers aside to see what she’s doing with her hands. “You’re just fucking yourself with your finger. You’re not rubbing your clit.”

Hearing those words come out of his mouth, as clinical as his tone is, sends a pulse of heat over her. She pulls her finger out and rubs it back and forth, hard and fast against her clit.

“No, not like —” He exhales loudly. “Fine. Here.”

He slides his hand over top of hers, only a thin layer of cotton between them, his middle finger guiding hers in a slow circle. She lets out a shaky breath, because _now_ something is happening, a tightness curling up from her navel to her chest.

“Now you can put a finger inside yourself,” he says.

She doesn’t see how she can keep pressure on her clit and be inside herself and on her breast all at the same time. “I don’t have enough hands for that.” She glances up at him, pleading. “Will you do it for me? Just once? I think I’m getting close, Bellamy, I’m — I need you to touch me.”

He makes a bit of a growling sound through his teeth, like he’s mad, but not mad at her, mad at himself, and anyway she doesn’t care, his fingers are so close to touching her, and she’s so wet. If he touched her, she’d be left to his whims, however he saw fit to get her off, and just the thought of losing control to him sends her reeling, ratchets up the tension in her body twofold.

“Clarke,” he says, a warning, but his voice is thin and low; she can feel the tension in him too, the quickness of his breath, the wild look in his eyes like he really does want her, wants to be the one to make her come for the very first time.

“Please, Bellamy.” Little moans are escaping her throat at the end of each panted exhale. She uses the hand on her breast to lift her shirt up and relieve some of the heat, feel skin on skin.

“Fuck,” Bellamy says, staring at her chest now, eyes wide. She can feel his resolve shatter. Nothing changes physically but the air around them does, and Bellamy seems to go from Octavia’s awkward, goofy older brother to confident Mr. Blake in just a beat.

He swats both of her hands away and rolls on top of her, one knee between hers, propping himself up with his forearm beside her head, and yanks her underwear down so hard the waistband rips a little. He keeps them stretched at her thighs and slots his hand between her legs, smears her wetness around on his fingers before sliding one inside her. She gasps because, unlike with Finn, this doesn’t hurt at all, in fact feels amazing, especially when he crooks it upward and cups the rest of her in his palm, hitting her clit with the rough calluses of his hand.

“Christ you’re tight,” he says.

“Is that bad?”

“It’s the best thing in the world, sweetheart.”

Something about _sweetheart_ sends her flying. The word echoes in her ears and she finds her hands climbing up Bellamy’s back, kneading the hard muscles there for something to hold onto.

He leans down to kiss her again, hard and urgent, and before she can even catch her breath, he’s trailing down and slotting his lips around a nipple. She feels his teeth graze it, the flat of his tongue, a slight sucking in, and she lets out a cry, much louder than any noise she’s made yet, mesmerized at how little control she has over it, over the movements of her body, the feeling of imminent eruption. She couldn’t stop it if she tried.

“I’m going to try a second finger, okay,” Bellamy says into her hair between kisses on her throat, and her only assent is a breathy moan. When he slides in a second finger it stretches painfully for only a second before she feels widened and full in a good way, and he’s touching some part of her she’s never touched herself before, a place inside that makes it feel like she’s poised at the edge of something so much bigger than herself, unwilling to look down.

He fucks her hard and fast with his hand while he sucks at her other breast. It’s so much different than Finn’s ridiculous punching and tongue-choking; Bellamy uses an upward sweeping motion, constant movement and pressure on her clit. Her entire cunt fits in his massive palm. Wet sloshing sounds are happening that she thinks surely can’t be coming from her.

“I don’t — I don’t know how to —” she begins, chasing a feeling like needing to sneeze, but not knowing how to make it happen, how to let go completely.

“I’ve got you. Come for me, baby, I’ve got you.”

It’s the _baby_ that does it. She locks onto the slippery feeling and lets it drag her up and up. When she reaches the top, it’s like pulling the trigger of a gun. It starts at her center and expands outward; the first surprise is the feeling of her walls pulsing and clenching around his fingers, completely of its own volition. The second is guttural shout that might nearly be a scream; it feels detached from her, like she’s hearing it come from someone else. The third is the way her back arches off the bed — her body isn’t even hers anymore, it’s his, he’s made this happen — and her breath stops in her throat, feet kicking uselessly in the sheets. And lastly, the bliss of every nerve firing in her entire body, the total blankness of thought. A single moment that seems to stretch on forever.

But it doesn’t. It ebbs downward. She twitches with aftershocks, suddenly oversensitive, sheets clutched in her fists. Bellamy slips his fingers out and wipes them on his pajama pants.

“God, look at you,” he says, and kisses her one last time, eagerly, full of pride, smiling against her lips, the smile he used to give her when he would tutor her in math and she’d come home with a big red A on her test and he’d put it on the fridge.

He slumps back on his side. “You did it.”

“I don’t think _I_ did anything,” she says, and reaches down to pull up her underwear.

He puts a hand on her wrist. “Just...one sec.”

“What?”

“I want to remember this. The way you look right now.”

Clarke’s shirt is bunched up under her arms and her underwear is at her knees. Never in her life would she think it was a flattering position to be in. She can tell her face is probably a deep shade of red and her lips feel swollen and tender. Her nipples are harder than she’s ever seen them. Bellamy lets his gaze sweep over her, expression inscrutable, then he says. “Okay.”

She tugs her shirt down and sits up to pull up her underwear. An _enormous_ wet spot coats the sheets, wider than her hips and just as long, and she’s mortified.

“Did all that come from me?” she asks.

“You’re a squirter,” he says, smug for some reason.

“Is that bad?”

“God, no.”

“Is it gross?”

“Nope. Consider it a fun party trick, like being double-jointed, or doing that clover thing with your tongue.”

“Like this?” She sticks out her tongue and ruffles it into a clover.

“Like that, except you get everything wet when you come.” Then he adds, “Here, lie down again. On your side.”

So she does, facing away from him, and he curls behind her, trails his hand under her shirt and slides it gently over her stomach, her side, her hips, her thighs. It feels so good it’s nearly unbearable, like her entire ability to feel has been ratched up to eleven. He kisses her neck, behind her ear.

She can’t believe it. He’s spooning her. Bellamy Blake is spooning her. The only other time she’s been spooned is when Octavia accidentally curls around Clarke in her sleep.

She tries to remember every single thing about this moment: the mid-morning sun streaming through the slats in the blinds, black hoodie draped across his desk chair, soft flannel of his pajama pants against the backs of her bare legs, mild discomfort of the wet spot underneath them. The sharp smell of her release encompassing them both, hot flush of her skin slowly cooling.

“Tell me what you’re feeling,” Bellamy says. His mouth is resting on her shoulder and he presses a soft kiss against it.

“Good,” she says. “Happy.”

“Did I do anything you didn’t like?”

“No. I liked all of it. I wish I could —” she stops herself, knowing already that he’s going to say no, that this is the first and last time this can happen.

“Wish what?”

“I wish we could do this all the time.” It’s easier to say it not facing him, so she can’t see his expression. “I wish I could do the same thing for you. Put my hand on you or my mouth or — I wish you could be my first.” Then, more firmly, “I want you to be my first.”

He pulls her closer to him, runs his hand from her stomach down to the top of her thigh, presses his face into the crook of her neck and breathes in. Like he wants it. Wants her. Wants to be her first, and it pains him to say, “We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You know why not.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“You’re sixteen. I’m almost a decade older than you.”

“I’m seventeen. My birthday was in August and you didn't get me a present." Actually he changed her oil, but he always does that so it doesn't count.

"God knows you don't get everything you want already."

She ignores the jab. "And you’re eight years older than me. My mom met my dad when she was twenty-three and he was thirty and it wasn’t a big deal.”

“Seventeen to twenty-three is a huge difference. Remember what I was like at seventeen?”

“Skinny, obnoxious, willing to fight the moon?”

“Exactly.”

Seventeen-year-old Bellamy was a know-it-all who spent all his time in the library, had exactly one friend (Miller), never went to a single dance (not even senior prom), and his only extracurricular was being treasurer of the National Honor Society. By his junior year, he’d stopped getting into as many fights, threw himself into his studies, got into Purdue on partial scholarship, and when he left, it broke her heart, but she's never told him that. He came back colder and more serious and calmer than he once was. Also, hotter. His college transformation was a glow-up if she ever saw one.

“I’m nothing like you at seventeen,” she says.

“But you _are_ my little sister’s best friend, which makes you like my little sister.”

She cringes at the thought on impulse, but after a moment, the discomfort bleeds away, and she’s left confused: the wrongness of it as a concept, but the rightness of it as a feeling. Who else would she want to be with? Who else would she ever love, would ever love her, as much?

“And,” he continues casually, “I’m taking over for Diyoza when she goes on maternity leave, which means I’ll be your teacher for three months.”

She didn’t know that. A bolt of excitement runs through her. Diyoza is her world history teacher this year, which means Bellamy will be completely in his element. It means he’ll wear a suit every day. It means he’ll be driving her to school during cold winter mornings. It means she’ll have to call him Mr. Blake and pretend they’ve never lain in bed together, probably pretend they don’t even know each other. It means history will be interesting again, the way he always makes it, instead of how Diyoza teaches it, all wartime strategy and rote fact memorization.

But — Finn is also in her history class.

This has the potential to be a nightmare.

“You said I could ask you anything,” she says. “If I ask you something, will you promise you’ll give me a completely honest answer?”

“I promise.”

“Are you really jealous of Finn?”

He goes still, his hand on her thigh stopping its path of movement.

“Sorry,” she says, “I just — you think so much about how I’m feeling and whether I’m happy, and you don’t seem to realize I have the same concerns for you. I don’t want to date someone if it makes you feel bad.”

“You should date Finn if you like him. If you don’t like him, you shouldn’t date him.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me if you would be upset if I started dating him. Like, exclusively.”

After a beat, he says carefully, “It would upset me if he doesn’t treat you as well as you deserve. And so far he's given me no reason to believe he would, or even knows how.”

“Okay, how do I deserve to be treated?”

She can feel his smile press against her neck before he even says it. “Like a princess.”

“Oh my god. You’re the _worst.”_

“You told me to be completely honest.”

“And that’s not what you’re doing.”

“Okay, fine.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m not jealous, but I’m something, and I need to get over it. It’s not your problem and I don’t want it to affect your decision to date Fawn.”

“Finn.”

“Whatever.”

“Describe the not-jealousy.”

“I don’t know. Just, the thought of him touching you when you don’t want to be touched. The way he talks to you. The apprehension you have toward him you think is normal. It’s not. You should be excited to date someone, not just excited at the idea of being liked for the first time. But I can’t be the one to tell you what to do or not do. You have a right to try new things with new people, to find out what you like and don’t like, to fail or succeed however _you_ choose. I don’t have a say in that.”

“But I want you to have a say in it. It matters to me what you think.”

“Are you sure you want to know what I think?”

“Positive.”

He lifts up on his elbow to look down at her, tilts her chin toward him so they’re face to face. “Finn has no idea how good you are, Clarke. He might like you but he doesn’t like you for the right reasons. You’re beautiful and smart, anyone can see that, but you’re also all these other things I know he’ll never be able to see because he has the depth of a toothpick. You’re funny and kind, open and inquisitive. You have so much potential you’re totally blind to, and by the time you’re my age, you’re not even going to remember me. You’re going to be off in New York or some other big city making seven figures and doing something really important. Leading people or healing them or whatever you choose to do. That’s the you Finn can’t see because he’ll probably never be anything more than what he is now, a deadbeat class clown.”

She feels like he just swung a wrecking ball at her. Part of her is angry that he sees Finn in such a negative light, that he thinks Finn doesn’t appreciate her when she’s never felt anything but adored by him, and he hasn’t done anything wrong, not really. Last night was a miscommunication.

But then — _You’re not even going to remember me._

“I could never forget you,” she says.

“You say that now, but it’s a promise you can’t keep.”

“That’s not true.”

“Even if it isn’t, I’m only going to drag you down. You have a future. A bright one. I don’t. I’ll be stuck in this crap town teaching history until I’m dead.”

“But I love you.”

His expression softens, saddens. When Clarke was a kid, she used to tell him she loved him all the time. She and Octavia have always thrown the sentiment around easily, and for a long time, Bellamy said it back, until one day he stopped. So Clarke stopped telling him, even though she never stopped feeling it.

“Sometimes love isn’t the most important thing,” he says. “And sometimes it doesn’t last as long as you think it will.”

He says it like he knows. Like someone with a broken heart.

She gets it, though, as much as she wishes she didn’t. He’s trapped raising Octavia, taking care of Aurora until she passes. He’s sacrificed everything for his family, for her. She wants to tell him that she’ll want him forever, but maybe he’s right. Maybe she’ll graduate high school and move away to college and, unlike him, she won’t come back. He’ll become a childhood memory. They’ll grow distant, only see each other when Clarke comes home for Christmas, and the only thing they’ll still have in common is all the years they spent together, their shared history.

“I don’t believe that,” she says, but it’s a lie, a wish that things won’t change. But she knows they will. They have to.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a beta now! So there will hopefully be fewer errors. Big thanks to fav fav human B&E for her amazing editorial insight.

Diyoza goes into labor sooner than anticipated, on a Wednesday morning in mid-October. Clarke is pulling her bag out of the backseat of her car in front of the Blakes’ house when the garage door opens and Bellamy walks out wearing a charcoal grey suit. His hair is done neatly and his beard is trimmed. He’s clutching a thermos in his hand and Clarke is so tired that she’s tempted to go right up and kiss him, just to taste the coffee on his lips.

“C’mon, O, we’re gonna be late,” he shouts into the open doorway, then he sees Clarke and says, “Morning, princess.”

She comes up the driveway and asks, “Diyoza finally pop?”

“About two in the morning.”

“Mind if I catch a ride?”

“Be my guest.”

She gets in on the passenger side and moves to the middle and buckles herself in. The truck is a manual so she has to straddle the console. When Bellamy drives, his hand is always between her legs, a detail that never seemed weird or suggestive until now, knowing what his hand _actually_ feels like between her legs.

He climbs in and turns the engine. At first she doesn’t notice the ease of his body slotted beside hers; it’s so normal, but now she feels like there’s tension between them, and for every brush of their bodies she craves so much more, an appetizer to an entree she’s not allowed to order.

“What period do I have you?” he asks while they wait for Octavia.

“Fifth.”

“Any advice?”

“Diyoza only cares about the three of us who pay attention. She lets everyone else sleep because she’s too jaded to chase after the students who don’t care, so the class is pretty strictly divided between over-ambition and total ambivalence.”

“Great.”

Octavia rushes out the door with a knock-off Kate Spade on her elbow and a lidless Tupperware container of cereal sloshing in her hands. She climbs into the truck and slams the door and says a breathless, “Morning.” Bellamy peels out of the driveway. Some milk splashes onto Clarke’s skirt.

 

* * *

 

Clarke hasn’t hung out one-on-one with Finn since homecoming. In the two weeks since, he’s gone out of town both weekends on college visits, so she only sees him at school. He walks with her between second and third period because their classes are across the hall from each other. They have lunch together every day, and also history, but that’s it. He says he’s not big on texting because he doesn’t have a smartphone, and he doesn’t like talking on the phone. Sometimes it makes her self-conscious, the brevity of their interactions.

After second period, she leans against her locker with her textbooks clutched to her chest, and he props his arm by her head, hovering close like they’re in some old movie. He leans in and whispers, “I can’t stop thinking about homecoming.”

“Me too.” It’s not exactly a lie. She can’t stop thinking about the _weekend_ of homecoming, specifically Sunday morning.

The one-minute warning bell rings.

“Can I take you out on Friday?” he asks. “There’s something I want to ask you.”

“Yeah, sure,” she says, excited, even though she knows what the question will be, just like she knew he wanted to ask her to homecoming.

The hallway is all but empty now. Finn presses a quick kiss to her lips, just as Clarke senses a familiar presence walking by. She doesn’t need to look up to know Bellamy has stopped in his tracks at the sight of them; she can feel his irritation on a spiritual level.

Clarke nudges Finn away and glances up to confirm her suspicions. Bellamy is glowering at them, lips pursed, arms across his chest. He jerks his head toward the classroom. “Get to class, Collins.”

Finn rolls his eyes and pushes off the lockers. He punches Clarke’s arm lightly and says, “See you at lunch. Hope you brought an extra sandwich, I’m starving,” then heads into the room.

Clarke shoots a glare at Bellamy. She opens her mouth to tell him he’s being unfair; he didn’t stop anyone else’s hallway PDA. Instead she says, “Am I in trouble, Mr. Blake?”

He offers a dark little smile, pitches his voice low enough so only she can hear. “Would you like to be?”

These next three months are going to kill her. Before she can react, the final bell rings and she walks backward toward class, not wanting to take her eyes off of him. “Not fair,” she mouths, and slips into the classroom.

 

* * *

 

She’s dying to get to fifth period. At lunch she gives Finn her entire sandwich. Their table is wrapped up in Jasper’s lively storytelling of how he almost got caught by the TSA this summer for bringing a ton of weed back to Ohio, a story Clarke has already heard at least twice. Octavia, who has probably heard it several more times, still laughs at all the right parts.

After, Clarke sits through fourth period study hall staring at her AP calc homework but not seeing anything. In her head she’s replaying Bellamy’s _Would you like to be?_ and all the things he said to her that Sunday morning, and the feeling of his body against her back, and his fingers inside of her, the way his skin tastes. She presses her fingers lightly to her lips. In the two weeks since, she’s gotten herself off an average of twice a day, once in the morning as soon as she wakes up, sometimes in the shower, sometimes after school, and at night before bed. It’s like she’d been trapped on the stoop of a giant house and Bellamy unlocked the door and let her into all the rooms. She can get herself very wet very quickly by thinking about Bellamy calling her _baby,_ and by knowing which feelings to chase and how to chase them, and she’s gotten good at being fast and silent about it.

She thinks she should feel guiltier about what happened than she does. What would Octavia think if she knew? What would her mother think? If her mom went to the school board about it, would Bellamy get fired? Is Bellamy right, and is Clarke somehow sabotaging herself in a way she’s not aware of? Is she really just a stupid kid who has no idea what she wants? Has Bellamy somehow manipulated her in a way she can’t see?

No. No, Bellamy has always been honest with her, has never hurt her, has always had her best interests at heart. If she can’t trust him, she can’t trust anyone. Sometimes she thinks she even trusts him more than Octavia, because Octavia always puts herself first, a luxury she doesn’t realize Bellamy’s constant sacrifices have afforded her. And he calls _Clarke_ spoiled.

By fifth period, Clarke has worked herself up so much that her skin feels too tight and she refuses to look up toward the front of the classroom. She sits near the middle of the room, the fate of all G last names everywhere, thankfully a decent distance away from the teacher’s desk. She occupies herself getting her textbook open to chapter six and her spiral-bound notebook open beside it, and her pencil bag above them. She gets out a yellow highlighter and two different color pens — pink and purple — to organize her notes between fact and commentary.

The final bell rings and the door closes and she can hear Bellamy’s footsteps come into the room. A few people are talking behind her but quiet down when he makes it to the front. Clarke finally looks up. He’s written his name on the board, _Mr. Blake_ in his big blocky writing, and wipes his hands free of the chalk.

“I’m Mr. Blake, and I’ll be your teacher for the next three or so months while Ms. Diyoza is on maternity leave. During that time we’ll be covering ancient Greece to the French Revolution, and I’ll be following Ms. Diyoza’s lesson plan as closely as I can. Questions before we get started?”

For a blissful second, Clarke can pretend he’s just another teacher, someone she barely knows. Then, as he’s scanning the room for hands, his eyes lock onto hers, and she flashes back to the way he’d looked at her when he said, _Come for me, baby._ She fidgets in her seat and clenches her thighs together.

He notices — it’s in the slightest movement of his mouth, a little quirk at the corner of his lips. Something no one else would see but her. He knows what she’s thinking; he’s thinking about it too. Remembering what she sounds like when she begs, what she looks like when she comes.

Then his gaze drifts away, and he says, “Go ahead and open your books to chapter six.”

 

* * *

 

Finn doesn’t have a car, so on Friday night, Clarke picks him up at his place. She pulls into a parking lot of a Section 8 apartment complex, a series of six blocky buildings. She didn’t know where he lived, and now she feels kind of bad about it. For some reason she just assumed his parents had money, probably because of all the fancy college visits.

He’s waiting for her outside. When he climbs in, he says hey and leans over and kisses her. She thinks it’s just a hello kiss and tries to pull away, but he drags her back by the shirt and does the annoying tentacle tongue thing again. Thankfully it only lasts for a few seconds before he pulls away and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “You’re so good at that.”

“Thanks.” She puts the car in reverse.

They go to Friendly’s and split an order of chicken tenders. They talk about school and Finn tells her a story about how Murphy’s dad beat the shit out of him and that’s why he wasn’t in school today, like it’s something funny that happened and not absolutely horrifying, and now Clarke feels bad for Murphy, too.

She’s been thinking a lot about what she’s going to say when Finn asks her out. She has a whole spiel about how she wants to go slow, even though they’re both seniors and will probably be parting ways by summer. _So you might be thinking, what’s the point in going slow if our time is limited?_ she plans to say. And the answer is: you can appreciate something even when you know it’s temporary, which she firmly believes, even if Bellamy thinks the opposite.

Homecoming may have sucked, but there’s still enough about Finn she likes to see at least where the relationship is headed. She’s not just doing this to make Bellamy jealous. That would be manipulative and cruel.

But it is a welcome side effect.

Finn breaches the subject over a turtle sundae. He’s scraping the cup with his spoon and there’s a little dollop of whipped cream on his upper lip. “So there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

“Yeah?”

“I think you know by now I really like you. And I think, maybe, you like me. And I know, like, we’ve been kind of doing a thing, but I was wondering if, maybe, you want to really do a thing? Like, be serious, or whatever.”

It’s not the most poetic dating proposal, but his nervousness is sweet, and so disarming that she ends up scrapping her whole speech.

“I’d like that,” she says.

“Cool, great,” he says, grinning. He takes the last bite of sundae and adds, “So I have another college visit this weekend, Kenyon this time,” and the topic is closed.

 

* * *

 

Just as Clarke predicted, Bellamy is a much better teacher than Diyoza. He narrates rather than lectures, like all of history is one big connective story. He tells jokes with such acuity it’s as if he’s practiced a stand-up routine. Even Harper’s questions, which are often so incisive that Diyoza doesn’t know the answer and brushes them off as irrelevant, Bellamy answers with ease, and on the rare occasion he doesn’t know something, or wants to cite his answer correctly, he pulls Google up on the projector and they research it until they come to a conclusion.

Most of the students who usually spend class texting under their desks start paying more attention and taking notes. Harper’s weekly after-school study group, which normally only consists of her and Clarke and one or two other stragglers, gets the attendance of nearly the whole class. It seems like everyone wants to impress Mr. Blake.

Only Murphy and Finn still sleep through class. They sit in the back and Bellamy tries to engage them a few times, but he gives up after the first week.

Outside of class, Bellamy has become so popular that even Clarke gets annoyed by it. She forgets he has other classes he teaches besides hers. She wants a dollar for every time she hears, “And Mr. Blake —” whispered by groups of girls in the hallway. Someone wrote on a toilet stall in Sharpie, “Mr. Blake Has Big Dick Energy” with a heart around it, and someone drew an arrow to it and wrote in ballpoint pen, “I would suck his dick for free tbh,” and an arrow from that which reads, “I would pay $5 to succ his dicc,” which is not something Clarke wants to be reading while taking a piss, but she takes a picture of it anyway. She has the impulse to add “Clarke Griffin is fucking Mr. Blake” and lets herself have a little daydream about the rumor mill churning over it, the awe and admiration and envy from the other students. But she doesn’t, because she said she wouldn’t tell anyone, and he’d also lose his job and that would be a total bummer.

Finn has started holding Clarke’s hand at lunch and in the hallway, so everyone knows they’re together-together now. Only a few teachers impose the no-PDA rule and one of them is Bellamy. She tries to take inventory of where he’ll be so she can avoid him, so she takes a different route to third period bio just to make sure of it. On a Thursday, he finds them anyway, and sees them holding hands. “No PDA,” he says as he walks past them in the hallway, the students parting quickly for him like he’s Moses or something.

Finn pulls his hand away. “What is _up_ with that guy?”

On Friday he catches them again. This time he says to Clarke, not Finn, “That’s one." As in, three strikes, you’re out. She assumes three strikes means a detention.

 

* * *

 

The following Monday, she gets to lunch and takes her regular seat at her regular table as the rest of the students file in. Pike oversees her lunch period, usually stands in the back corner chatting up anyone who walks past, sometimes reads a book, and never gets on anyone for anything. She heard that he used to be a hard-ass a long time ago, but some student in his class committed suicide, and Pike blamed himself. Since then, he pretty much lets everything slide unless someone is getting hurt.

She pulls out her sandwich from her bag and sets it aside for Finn, who should be showing up any minute. He has to walk all the way from the other side of school. She brings a little more food than usual now so she can split it with him and not get hungry by seventh period, and he’s also dropped hints about the kind of food he likes, potato chips and Cheetos and cookies, so she puts all of it on the Instacart list her mom keeps and which gets delivered on Sundays. Abby doesn’t seem to notice.

She gets a feeling like she’s being watched, and turns around to find Bellamy strolling past, a whistle on a lanyard swinging around two fingers, suit jacket discarded and his sleeves rolled up. He pretends not to notice Clarke looking at him. Pike is nowhere to be found.

Finn arrives and plops down next to her, not seeing Bellamy mere feet away, and plants a kiss to Clarke’s cheek. The second he does, Bellamy blows the whistle and Finn jumps.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he says, glancing over his shoulder at Bellamy looming behind them. “What happened to Pike?”

Clarke watches Bellamy from her peripheral vision as he continues placidly on his route around the cafeteria.

“I can guess,” she says.  

 

* * *

 

On Halloween, Clarke goes to the Blakes’ house to pass out candy. In her neighborhood the houses are too spread out and her neighbors are all old. She and Octavia stopped trick-or-treating when they turned fifteen. Before that, Bellamy always took them, walked them from house to house without a bag of his own, waited at the sidewalk while Octavia and Clarke rang the doorbell in their sparkly, gauzy costumes. Even when they were very little, four or five, and Bellamy could have worn a costume and gotten candy with them, he didn’t. He was always the older one. Always took responsibility for them.

When Clarke comes over, Octavia is dressed in an ugly salmon-colored bodycon dress with a beige cardigan and strings of red and yellow yarn looped around her neck. She’s in full contour and standing awkwardly in the corner of the living room to catch the waning evening light from the sliding glass door as she takes pouty-lip selfies.

“What are you supposed to be?” Clarke asks.

She puts up a peace sign and snaps another pic. “A sexy hot dog.”

“Why?”

“I’m going trick-or-treating.” She clicks off her phone and tucks it in her bra.

“You’re almost eighteen.”

“Jasper and I are taking his little cousin.”

“Oh.” Clarke has been so wrapped up in her own drama that she didn’t realize how distant she’s grown from Octavia despite their constant physical proximity. It feels like they haven’t had a real conversation since the school year started.

“You and Bell will be okay passing out candy, right?”

“We’ll do our best to keep the crowd at bay.”

From the driveway, Jasper honks his horn. “Don’t let them overtake the fort.” She kisses Clarke on the cheek and adds, “Good luck. Godspeed. Love you!” then heads out the door.

Clarke and Bellamy set up in the driveway with two folding chairs and an enormous bowl of candy. It’s nice seeing him in his hoodie and jeans again, for him to be dorky Bellamy instead of stern Mr. Blake for a while. The weather is colder than Clarke can handle; she’s wrapped up in a coat with a blanket over it.

“How do you think class is going?” Bellamy asks while they wait for their first trick-or-treaters. It’s only just turned six.

“I mean, good, I guess,” she says, watching a group of tiny superheroes climb up the stoop of the house across the street. The Blakes don’t live in a great neighborhood, definitely the poor side of town. There are a few strip clubs a block away, and the houses are all Cold War-era bungalows, little vinyl-sided boxes on postage-stamp lawns, barely larger than a double-wide trailer, each one nearly identical to the next.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s just, you know, every straight-leaning girl and vaguely queer guy in the entire school is basically wetting themselves over you. I’m just saying, like, you could stand to flirt a little less maybe.”

He snorts a laugh while he opens a fun-sized bag of M&Ms with his teeth.

“Why?” he asks, smiling smugly and popping one in his mouth. “Jealous?”

She could punch him. She could really, honestly punch him right in the face. She opens her photo reel and finds the pic she took of the bathroom stall and passes it to him. “See what you’re doing? You’re an epidemic.”

He reads the graffiti and grins before forcing his expression back into a frown. “Students shouldn’t vandalize school property. Think about the custodial staff who have to clean it up.”

“You’re lucky I don’t put your phone number up. You’d start getting a steady stream of nudes in minutes.”

“If they could only see what I was like in high school, not a single one of them would be interested anymore.”

The horde of superheroes jog across the street toward them, shouting “Trick or treat!” in synchronicity. Clarke is momentarily preoccupied dropping candy into faded pillowcases. The kids run off laughing and screaming their thanks.

“So how are you and Pin doing?” Bellamy asks.

“It’s Finn, and we’re in a relationship now. An exclusive one.” She doesn’t mean to sound like a little kid about it, but after the way he’s been behaving at school, that’s just how it comes out.

“I noticed,” he says, looking off to the side as if he doesn’t care. “How’s he treating your, uh —” He wiggles two fingers in the air, the same two fingers that had been inside her, and she hates that she blushes just looking at them.

“We haven’t really had a chance since homecoming.”

“That was a month ago.”

“Are you counting, Mr. Blake?” she asks sweetly.

He makes an indignant sound through his nose, watches Jasmine and Mulan come down the street with their parents.

“He’s been visiting a lot of college campuses so he’s been busy,” Clarke adds, in part to defend her relationship, and also to brag about her boyfriend and all his prospects.

“No he hasn’t.”

“What?”

“There’s a list of all the college visits scheduled, and I have to cross-check it when someone’s absent. He’s never been on the list.”

Clarke doesn’t know what to say. He’s visited five schools since the year started. “He must — he’s probably not letting the school know? Maybe he doesn’t know he has to say anything about it.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy says, looking skeptical, “that’s probably it.”

 

* * *

 

The next week, on a Tuesday when Finn is back from his most recent “college visit,” she asks, “How was Kenyon?”

“Great campus. Might apply. Hey, I gotta get something to Murphy real quick before class, see you at lunch, okay?” then he jogs off in the opposite direction before the one-minute warning bell even rings.

Clarke thinks she might cry. He’s lying to her. He’s really lying to her. She stops in front of her locker to switch out her books, takes a deep, shuddering breath, and totally forgets she’s directly in Bellamy’s daily path. She looks up just as he’s approaching, and at first he seems happy to see her, then sees how upset she is, gets concerned, and mouths, “You okay?”

She gives a little nod and closes her locker. Bellamy walks past and looks over his shoulder, still concerned, but she ducks into bio without meeting his gaze.

At lunch, Clarke doesn’t have the privacy or energy to confront Finn, especially with Bellamy always circling like an overprotective hawk, so she lets him eat her sandwich and yammer away to Monty about soccer or something boring like that, trying to take up as little space as she can.

In fifth period, he falls asleep in history before the bell even rings to signal the start of class.

Normally Bellamy leaves him alone. But today, he says, “Mr. Collins,” in his loud, deep speech voice. Finn jerks awake.

“Would you like to give us a quick recap of Platonic Idealism?”

Finn opens his book and starts flipping rapidly through the pages. “Uh, hold on.”

A few students start laughing. They’re not even in Greece anymore, they’re in Rome, but Finn doesn’t know that because he hasn’t paid attention a single day so far.

Bellamy sits on the table at front of the room, crosses his arms over his chest which makes him look even bigger. “We have forty-five minutes. I can wait.”

“It’s, um, it’s like when, you know, someone only likes you as a friend? And you, like, prefer that.”

The laughter grows a little louder. Bellamy makes a buzzer noise. “Try again.”

“Does it have to do with Plato?” Finn continues flipping pages. He’s made it to the end of the book and Clarke wishes he would calm down a minute and find the index.

“Closer.”

“Does it have to do with what he, like, thought about stuff? The stuff he thought was important.”

“You’ve dissected the root words, good job,” Bellamy says.

Clarke’s hand shoots in the air. “I know the answer, Mr. Blake.”

“I didn’t ask you, Ms. Griffin, I asked Mr. Collins.”

“But —” She can’t watch Finn flounder like this. No matter what’s going on in their relationship, he’s still her boyfriend. She has to stand up for him. “As entertaining as humiliating a student might be, it wastes class time and I think that time is better spent focusing on our current lesson.”

To anyone else, Bellamy’s expression would seem cool and even. But Clarke is intimately familiar with the glint in his eye. It’s the one he gets while they’re playing chess or Monopoly, and he prioritizes his need to win over having any fun. It’s also the look he used to get a long time ago when Octavia did something wrong, like skip her chores or get a bad grade, and Aurora did absolutely nothing about it, so Bellamy had to be the one to chastise her, and so he adopted this face, this I’m-the-one-in-control-here, don’t-you-dare-try-anything expression.

“That’s two,” he says to her, but hops off the table and circles around it to write on the board. “Platonic Idealism, Mr. Collins, refers to Plato’s theory of forms, which he asserts are the purest essence of reality, the original on which all other copies are based.”

Clarke looks back at Finn, who gives her a grateful smile.

 

* * *

 

Normally Clarke goes to Bellamy’s classroom after school and they drive home together. Today, as soon as the bell rings, she ducks out and starts walking the entire block to the Blakes’ house in the cold. When she gets there, she doesn’t go inside, just gets in her car and drives to her house.

What Bellamy did to Finn was immature and unfair, even if Finn _is_ being super shady. Bellamy has no right to take petty vengeance out on her behalf, especially since he doesn’t even want her. It’s not fair. None of it is fair.

Her mom is still at work when she gets home. They live on the edge of town in a giant house that they barely use. Her mom works all the time, and when she’s not working, she’s on a date, or at an event, or whatever else she does. After Jake died, and Abby realized Clarke was perfectly content at the Blakes’ house, she checked out as a mom completely.

Clarke decides to do something she almost never does: she takes a nap. Hours later, she wakes up to the sound of her doorbell ringing urgently. It’s dark already and she looks at her alarm clock — seven p.m. She climbs out of bed and rushes to the door saying, “Okay, jesus, one sec,” swings it open and finds Octavia.

“Where the hell have you been?” she asks, pushing past Clarke into the house. “Bellamy told me you _walked home_ today, and then you wouldn’t answer any of your texts, or even look at them because I don’t think you know your read receipts are still on and —”

“I was taking a nap.”

Octavia gets in her space and slaps a hand against her forehead. “You don’t have a fever.”

“I’m not sick.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Petty drama.”

“Since when do you hesitate to spill the tea?”

Clarke takes her into the living room and they sit down on the overstuffed couch no one sits on. It’s mostly just for show, along with the giant TV no one watches and the coffee table decorated with a series of travel magazines no one reads. Abby didn’t pick any of it out; she hired a decorator. Clarke turns on the fireplace with a remote, grabs an expensive throw pillow and hugs it to her chest.

“Tell me everything,” Octavia says.

Obviously, Clarke can’t tell her _everything._ But she starts with, “You know Finn and I are together.”

“The smell of the Jeep the night of homecoming made that pretty clear, yeah.”

Clarke buries her face in the pillow. “Oh my god.”

“Happens to the best of us. Is he as amazing as everyone thinks?”

“No,” she says, glancing up from the pillow and somehow feeling guilty about exposing the truth. “He’s actually kind of awful. He’s a really bad kisser and he, like —” She lifts her index finger and makes a stabbing motion with her arm. “It was really bad.”

“Yuck,” Octavia says, but her expression starts to falter, her maniacal enthusiasm for drama falling into something more sincere. “So is that the problem?”

“The problem is that he asked me if we could be serious but there’s something really shady going on.”

“Shady how?”

She tells her about the college visits and the absence list that he’s apparently not on, and how he barely texts and refuses to take phone calls.

“That’s def shady. What are you going to do?”

“Part of me just wants to talk to him about it.”

“And the other part?”

“Wants to figure out what’s really going on.”

Octavia grins. “Does that mean we’re going to internet stalk him?”

“Yeah, we’re gonna internet stalk him.”

Octavia borrows some of Clarke’s pajamas. Clarke brings down her MacBook and Octavia googles stuff on her phone. The first few cursory searches come up empty. Finn has a Facebook but doesn’t use it. His profile picture is a fuzzy snapshot of his eye, very close up. A bunch of people posted on his wall for his birthday last year and he didn’t even bother liking the posts. Still, they find out the name of his old high school in Pittsburgh.

The Class of ‘19 has a group that’s hidden to the public but open for anyone to join, so Octavia comes up with the idea of making a new account. They sign up for a fake email and build an account and join the group. There are thousands of pics posted, but thankfully they’re organized by event, so Clarke skips the most recent ones, finds the folders from last year, and she and Octavia split up flipping through the pics. Finn hasn’t been tagged in anything according to his profile, which either means he never tagged himself, or he untagged himself completely.

It takes a long time. What feels like an eternity later, Octavia says, “Found one!” She shows her phone to Clarke.

The picture is of a boy who isn’t Finn, but Finn is in the background, half out of the frame, standing with a girl. His arm is around her, the way he puts his arm around Clarke sometimes, awkward and heavy with no grace at all, like he’s trying to put her in a headlock. Clarke clicks to see who’s tagged in it: the boy in focus is named William Boyers, and the girl in the background is Raven Reyes.

She clicks on Raven’s profile, which is completely private. She can’t even tell if Raven and Finn are friends.

“This seems like a long shot,” Clarke says. “The picture was taken almost two years ago. I can’t accuse him of cheating on me with this.”

“Add her as a friend with the fake account and see if she has any recent pics of him.”

“But it looks like a fake account. She’ll never accept the request.”

Octavia shrugs. “Worth a shot.”

Clarke adds a few pictures of total strangers she finds in an image search to make the account look as real as she can, along with a meme or two and an article she had up in a tab about how millennials are killing the high school reunion. She hits Add Friend on Raven’s profile and closes her laptop.

“Inconclusive,” Clarke says.

“It’s a long con,” Octavia offers. “So do we officially think he’s cheating on you?”

“I think he’s cheating on someone else with me.”

“What’s the point if he’s going home to her a couple weekends a month?”

“I don’t know. Power move, maybe.”

“Power move,” Octavia agrees.

“What do you want to do now?”

Octavia reaches in her purse and pulls out a bag of sour gummy edibles.

“Good god, how much did Jasper even buy?” Clarke asks.

“A _ton.”_

Clarke learned her lesson at homecoming so she takes a bite out of one, not even half, and Octavia takes the rest.

“I always get the munchies real bad so let’s go ahead and order pizza,” Octavia suggests.

She puts in the order on her phone and Clarke goes in the kitchen to find the slip of paper in a junk drawer with her mom’s AmEx number on it. The order comes to forty dollars and Clarke says, “There’s no way you can eat all that.”

“Watch me.” Then she gets comfortable on the couch and says, “I need to tell you the saga of Jasper Jordan,” but before she can launch into it, her phone rings. Clarke can see Bellamy’s grinning face light up the screen, a pic from a short vacation they took to Put-in-Bay years ago. To Clarke’s knowledge, it’s the only vacation they’ve ever taken. Octavia answers and puts it on speaker.

“Hey, big brother,” she says.

“Where are you?”

“I’m at Clarke’s house. Say hi, Clarke.”

“Hello, Mr. Blake.”

“Oh, come on,” he says. “You’re not still mad, are you?”

“If I say yes are you going to give me a detention?”

“No.”

“Then yes.”

“We’re not talking about this right now. O, take me off speaker.”

Octavia gives Clarke a what-the-fuck-was-that-about look, turns off speaker, and puts the phone to her ear. Clarke uses the opportunity to go to the bathroom because she knows as soon as she gets back, Octavia is going to be talking until she passes out.

She’s off the phone by the time Clarke gets back. “No really, what happened today?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“He did, but I want to hear your side of it.”

So Clarke tells her about him humiliating Finn and how she interjected, but leaves out her suspicions about him changing his lunch period and hallway route to keep an eye on her.

“You know I’m on Bell’s side here,” Octavia says.

“Really?”

“Bellamy cares about you a lot. He basically raised you. There’s no way he’d just sit around watching Finn mess with your head like this.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little unprofessional?”

Octavia shrugs. “Other teachers do it all the time. Student humiliation is a staple of the American education system.”

“What did he say about it?”

“His exact words were, ‘I can’t stand that smarmy little weasel.’”

“He didn’t even feel a little bad?”

“Not that he said, but he probably did. He made me read his teaching philosophy for his job applications last year. It’s all about empathy and student empowerment and whatever.”

“Still,” Clarke says.

Octavia picks at her chipped orange nail polish from homecoming and says, “I’m just upset he knew about the Finn thing before I did.”

“Octavia —” Clarke starts.

“I mean I get it, I haven’t been around a lot. I just thought, you know, you can still text me and stuff.”

“You’re right. I should try harder to keep you in the loop.” She feels guilty even saying it, because there’s no way she’d give Octavia all the details of the situation.

“And I should be around more often. I just didn’t think it would be this hard balancing cheerleading and senior year and a boyfriend.”

Clarke nearly chokes on her own spit. “Jasper Jordan is your _boyfriend?”_

“Weird, isn’t it?” she asks, but looks pleased about it.

“Uh, yeah kinda.”

So Octavia tells Clarke about how she wasn’t at all interested in Jasper at first, but he hung around and kept making her laugh, and the “snobby sophomore bitches” on the cheerleading squad looked down on her for it, so _of course_ she had to stand up to them, and apparently, her first kiss with Jasper was in front of the whole squad during practice, when Jasper had brought her a blueberry muffin and a nonfat latte from the coffee shop across the street. She thanked him and planted one right on his mouth, and he dropped the muffin bag.

The pizza comes and they eat while Octavia continues about her own love-life dramas, and now Clarke is feeling sufficiently high.

Octavia says, “I’m not even like, attracted to him, you know? I just like being around him. And that made me realize that I don’t think I’ve ever been attracted to anyone. Like, visually. With my eyes.” She pauses and eats a single pepperoni from her slice. “I think I might be ace.”

A lot of things click into place. Octavia’s always been grossed out by sex, and she never had any interest at all in dating until recently, even though she’s been getting asked out regularly since she was thirteen. Sophomore year she pretended to be sick for an entire week just to avoid sex ed, which backfired majorly when Bellamy took it upon himself to have the birds and bees discussion with her, a conversation which she said “ruined her entire life.”

“But — I wanted to try it. To see if I would like it.”

“Wait, wait. You’re telling me you had sex with Jasper Jordan,” Clarke says. It feels like her brain is exploding.

“Yeah.” Octavia wrinkles her nose. “Homecoming night. Remember I didn’t come home? It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t really good, either. It wasn’t anything. It was like mashed potatoes, you know? Like, mashed potatoes are always just...mashed potatoes.”

“I love mashed potatoes.”

“See? Anyway, I told him I probably didn’t want to do it again. And he was totally okay with it. He told me he likes me for my energy, whatever that means.”

The edible makes Clarke’s reaction so intense. Envy stacks on top of itself in an overbearing tower — Octavia had sex before Clarke. It was something they used to talk about when they were younger, although now, in retrospect, it was always Clarke talking about it _to_ Octavia, and Octavia saying things like, “Why would anyone want that?” which at the time seemed like a reasonable reaction for a thirteen-year-old to have. Clarke sometimes agreed, because penises did seem totally gross, they still kind of do, but that doesn’t stop the overwhelming strain of desire Clarke feels coursing through her body every minute of every day. She honestly thought she’d be the first to lose her virginity, seeing as how Octavia has never expressed interest in anyone. The fact that Octavia had sex first makes Clarke feel so far behind. She was sure, _sure_ she would be the one to lose her virginity first.

“So now we just get high and make out sometimes,” Octavia says. “It’s like having a really intense friend. And I mean, like, you’re an intense friend too, but I don’t know, it just feels different with you. You’re like, part of me, and he’s separate from me, and that’s fine.”

Clarke thinks back to how hurt Bellamy was that Octavia lied about her whereabouts at homecoming, so she asks, “Does Bellamy know?”

“I should probably tell him eventually, for the sake of ‘honesty at all costs’ or whatever, but I don’t want him to go after Jasper with a shotgun, either.”

“Does he tell you about the people he’s had sex with?”

She stares at the ceiling like it’ll give her the answers. “You know, he hasn’t. Until this very second I kind of assumed he’s never had sex. Because, like, who would want to have sex with him? He's a big dork.” She rolls her eyes over to Clarke and starts giggling. “Remember when you asked me if you could make out with him?”

Clarke grips the throw pillow harder. “Yeah.”

“You didn’t actually _do_ that, did you?”

“No,” Clarke scoffs, like the idea is totally absurd.

“Good. I freaked out a little when you asked and then only later thought about how much it would, like, _really_ freak me out.”

“Yeah, no, definitely.”

“When I was a kid, I remember wanting you to marry him so we could be real sisters, but then I realized you guys are as much brother and sister as he and I are. And plus, you’re like, totally incompatible.”

“How?”

“For one, Bellamy is an uptight know-it-all, and you’re — don’t take this the wrong way — kind of demanding? Maybe stubborn is a better word. Or critical. You have really high standards for everything, and so does he, so it just seems, I don’t know, volatile. You guys would eventually kill each other.”

She’s right. Of course she’s right. Bellamy was right too. It was stupid of Clarke to get a crush on him, to go to him for help with sex stuff when she knew Octavia would be bothered by it, to put their honesty clause at risk.

But that doesn’t change the fact that everyone she knows has already had sex, and she’s miles behind. So even if Finn is doing some sketchy shit, she’s at least going to ride this relationship out long enough to have sex with him, to get it over with, so she won’t go to college a virgin.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end note for warnings.

A week later, when Raven Reyes still hasn’t accepted the friend request, Clarke decides to take the high road and have a conversation with Finn — in person, in private. Confronting your problems head-on: it’s the adult thing to do. She invites him over to her house after school.

He drops his backpack on the ground when he enters, glances around, and whistles. “This is a McFreakin mansion, wow.”

She asks if he wants anything to eat or drink, to which he says yes, and proceeds to completely raid the fridge and pantry. She reminds herself he’s a teenage boy, so of course he eats too much, and she also sometimes wonders if he’s underfed at home. From ages twelve to eighteen, Bellamy ate almost six meals a day. By comparison Finn hardly eats anything at all. And anyway, somebody needs to eat the food in their house. The housekeeper ends up throwing most of it out because no one is home to eat it.

Finn sits at the kitchen table with a smorgasbord of junk food in front of him, the kind of stuff that lines their pantry because it doesn’t expire, and goes to town on some chips and salsa. He talks with his mouth full, telling her all about the cool paper airplanes they learned how to make in shop class.

“Mine was the best,” he says, a drop of red on his chin. “It flew all the way to the end of the room. I got an A.”

She can’t help but find his excitement endearing, feels a surge of pride for him, and wonders how much happier he’d be if he worked harder and got better grades. He’s obviously in a good mood, so when he’s done telling her about his day, she takes a chip and nibbles at it, and casually asks, “So, when you leave town, are you really going on college visits?”

He freezes, chip halfway to his face.

“I just mean, like,” she continues, “if you don’t, you can tell me. I want you to feel like you can be honest with me.” She occupies herself by picking up a chip shard from the placemat and crushing it between her fingers.

“Come on, Clarke. Don’t be stupid.”

She has no idea what that’s supposed to mean. It sounds weirdly like a threat.

“I’m not,” she says. “It’s just, Bel — Mr. Blake mentioned you weren’t on the college visit list.”

“There’s a _list?”_ He drops the entire chip in the jar of salsa and pushes it away, kind of dramatically like Clarke should be upset that she’s made him lose his appetite. “Can that guy mind his own fucking business for five minutes? I swear to fucking god, I’m going to beat his fucking ass.”

She’s surprised by his aggression, and tries to placate him with, “It wasn’t him. I asked about it is all.” When he leans back against the chair and stares angrily out the window, Clarke adds, “I’m worried about you.”

He jerks toward her so quickly that the chair squeaks against the tile. “What the fuck, Clarke?”

Clarke winces and raises her arms over her face, like he’s about to hit her, then lowers them quickly, wondering why that was her automatic response when all he did was move forward a little.

Her reaction only seems to bolster him. He snatches her wrist, squeezes it in his grip until she can feel blood pulse at her fingertips. “You’re keeping tabs on me?” His voice is quieter now but somehow that makes it worse than if he were yelling. With yelling, she can yell back. With talking quietly, she feels defenseless, like any fearful response would seem out of line and make her look irrational. “What have I ever done to make you not trust me? Huh? Name it. Name one fucking thing that I’ve done. Nothing. You can’t. Because I’m good to you. I’ve treated you right since the beginning and you know it.”

Before she can tell him he’s hurting her, he tosses her wrist away like he’s disgusted by it. She’s not used to being spoken to like that. No one’s ever gotten this mad at her before, not once in her entire life. She thought it was something that only happened on TV dramas. She hates that tears spring to her eyes; a rush of guilt hits her in the gut — he’s right, of course. He hasn’t done anything, and she’s been trying to find dirt on him. Going behind his back. Snooping into his life. Thinking the worst of him.

“Don’t be that girlfriend, Clarke,” he says. “You’re better than that.”

“I’m sorry.” She stares at the chip slowly sinking into the salsa jar like a capsized boat. “You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m sorry I made it seem like I don’t trust you.”

Her compliance seems to calm him a little. He moves on from the tortilla chips to the Swiss Cake Rolls, eats the first in the package in two big bites and sucks the melted chocolate off his fingers. Outside, a breeze picks up a pile of leaves and swirls them into a cone. Clarke tracks it across her backyard, until the wind settles and the leaves fall to stillness.

“It’s just,” he says, “my ex-girlfriend was super, like, controlling and paranoid, and now I get like, really freaked out when it feels like someone is trying to keep an eye on me. And just so you know, I’m not on the college visit list because they’re not official. The visits. I don’t schedule them with the school, I just, like, show up and walk around campus. I hate those fucking little tours they take you on and how they give their whole sales pitch and whatever. I just want to see the campus on a normal day. Pretend I’m a regular student.”

“That makes sense,” Clarke finds herself saying, but the words feel detached from her.

He takes her hand and squeezes it, not rough like before, ignoring the thin red lines his fingers had left behind on her wrist. He smiles at her in the flirty way she likes. “Feeling better now?”

“Yeah,” she says, but she still feels like he’s upset with her, and even though she’d been planning to talk to him about sex later, she decides to ask now. To make him happy again. “There was one other thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Anything,” he says kindly.

“You can probably tell already, but I’m a virgin, and I was wondering if — if you might want to have sex with me.” Before he can respond, she adds quickly, “I know it, like, sucks to be with someone who has no experience, so I understand if you want to say no.”

“Are you kidding? Clarke —” He pushes forward again, and Clarke, like before, winces, arm half-raised over her face before she realizes he’s just trying to kiss her. He doesn’t seem to notice her reaction, just presses his sticky lips firmly against hers, doesn’t even wait for her to kiss back (and she doesn’t, for some reason; she freezes). “I’d be honored.”

“Okay. Cool. Good.”

“Now?” he asks, glancing upstairs.

“I know this sounds cheesy, but...I want it to be special. Can it be special?”

“Yeah, of course it can be special.”

“Maybe we can get a nice hotel room or something?”

He gives her an apologetic look. “I don’t really have that kind of money.”

“I do.” She can put it on her mom’s AmEx and deal with the consequences later. “I’ll make the reservations for Friday? After the game?”

“Perfect.”

 

* * *

 

Early morning the next day, Octavia somehow manages to make it out to the truck before Bellamy, and Clarke uses the time to update her on the conversation she had with Finn. She takes care only to mention the virginity-loss half of her conversation, and not the yelling half.

“Oh my god, that’s so exciting,” Octavia says. “We’re both going to be non-virgins!”

Bellamy comes out a second later, a pile of papers and folders under one arm and his coffee in the other. His suit is navy today. He glances between them like he knows he walked in on a conversation he’s not supposed to hear.

“Get in, we’re running late,” he says.

“We’re always running late,” Octavia replies.

Clarke squeezes into the middle of the cab. Bellamy backs out of the garage so fast, she has to steady herself on the dash. She’s barely spoken to him since Halloween; her distance makes it easier to see him as just Mr. Blake. Some days, though, it’s difficult. Sometimes she’s the only one to get his sense of humor, so bone dry that no one is quick enough to catch it. She finds herself giggling alone at his more subtle quips, and occasionally he’ll toss in an inside joke that only she knows, something from their childhood — never himself reacting to it, of course — and she has to tuck her chin to her chest to hide her laughter. It’s hard to remember to raise her hand when she wants to speak, not blurt things out as she thinks of them, as if they’re just having a regular conversation or a study session. Some days, he looks at her too much while he’s teaching. Some, too little, like he’s over-correcting for the too-much days.

She glances at him now, jaw clenched, neglecting to brake as he speeds over the railroad tracks, sending the three of them bouncing while the shocks squeal. A single thought settles over her, not a sharp realization like jumping into a pool, but a slow one, wading in: Friday night, when she’s having sex with Finn, she knows she’ll be thinking about Bellamy.

 

* * *

 

On Thursday, the day before the big day, Raven Reyes finally accepts Clarke’s friend request. Of course, it happens in fifth period. Bellamy is giving them a quiet study day for a test coming up next week. He’s sitting at his desk, typing something on the computer (he only types with five fingers, two on his left and three on his right, but he’s weirdly fast at it), and Clarke feels her phone vibrate in her bookbag. She reaches down and looks at it, her eyes go wide, and her hand shoots up. When Bellamy doesn’t immediately notice, she says, “Mr. Blake.”

And he must be really distracted, because instead of looking over, he says, “What, prin —” He stops, clears his throat. “Yes, Clarke?”

No one seems to notice the slip-up.

“Can I go to the bathroom?”

“I don’t know, can you?”

“Seriously?”

He raises a do-you-really-want-to-test-me eyebrow at her.

 _“May_ I go to the bathroom, Mr. Blake?”

“You may.”

She slips her phone into her bra while he’s not looking, and goes up to his desk to take the pass — Diyoza’s, which is an actual gauntlet, a big metal glove with the word HALLPASS scrawled across it. His focus is trained once more on the monitor, not acknowledging her at all. She walks casually out the door, but as soon as it closes behind her, she speed-walks into the bathroom and locks herself in a stall. There she waits for the agonizingly slow internet to load Facebook, and goes straight to Raven’s profile and clicks around. First, no relationship information, which is normal, no one fills that out, it’s like bad luck or something, then starts flipping through her pictures.

She doesn’t get far. It’s the third picture. Raven, dressed as a cat, is kissing Finn, wearing no apparent costume, just his neon windbreaker, and he’s kissing back, and the caption reads, _Happy five years babe! Told you we’d make it through anything,_ with a train of celebratory emojis following it. The date is Halloween, when he said he was at Kenyon, well after he and Clarke decided to become official. Clarke screencaps it and sends it to Octavia.

Then, just to be safe, she opens a new message thread to Raven and says, _Are you in a relationship with Finn Collins?_

She waits a few seconds to see if Raven will reply, but she’s probably in school too, so Clarke tucks her phone back in her bra and returns to class. Bellamy doesn’t spare a glance as she closes the door behind her. She passes Finn, who is drooling onto the tattered paper-bag cover of his textbook, which isn’t even his history book, but his pre-calc one. He wrote MATH in ballpoint pen on the side.

She pauses briefly, noticing the letters FC carved into the plywood. He must have done it today; a few shavings remain scattered across his desk. It looks like it was done with a knife. She remembers being irritated with him at a football game while he showed it off to Murphy, huddled together in shadow beside the concession stand. He had watched a YouTube tutorial on how to remove the safety latch, so he could flip it open quickly, one-handed, like a real old-school switchblade. At the time she thought nothing of it — boys and their toys and all that. But now, after their talk in her kitchen, that moment seems far more telling than she gave it credit for.

She returns to her desk. A few minutes later, her phone vibrates and she checks it again — new message from Raven. Clarke has never texted in class before, but it’s just Bellamy, so under her desk, as furtively as she can, she opens the message.

_Yes he’s my boyfriend who is this??_

“Phone away, Ms. Griffin,” Bellamy says.

She puts it away long enough for him to get distracted and then pulls it out again. Another message: _Is he in trouble again?_

She starts to type back, _I’m,_ but Bellamy says, “That’s three.”

She stares at Raven’s messages — Finn has a girlfriend in Pittsburgh, and apparently he’s been in some kind of serious trouble before, and now Bellamy fucking Blake, the dude who once puked for three hours after trying to prove to Miller he could drink a whole gallon of milk, is actually, honest-to-god about to punish her for texting in class.

She puts her phone away right as he slaps a pink slip of paper on her desk. She turns it over. DETENTION NOTIFICATION, it says. For Saturday morning. Seven to eleven a.m. Reason: _Repeated insubordination (e.g. phone use in class)._

“Bellamy, come on,” she says. “Almost everyone in this room texts every day, and you never —”

“Want another?”

She purses her lips shut and crosses her arms over her chest, feeling petulant. Her chin starts to tremble and she clenches her jaw to force it steady. When it’s clear she’s not going to argue any further, he returns to his desk. She glances back at Finn, who slept through the entire exchange.

She imagined staying up all night having sex, sleeping in the next morning, ordering room service for breakfast. Having sex again before checkout. Pretending everything he said about his college visits was true, that the picture she’d seen of him and Raven in the Facebook group was just old. Now, she has to be all the way across town at seven in the morning, which means she has to wake up super early, which means she has to go to bed at ten or risk falling asleep in detention, which will surely get her _another_ detention, and the football game ends at nine. There’s no way Finn would want to leave early. That leaves her one hour to spare. And that’s assuming she even decides to go through with it knowing what she knows, the stone-cold confirmation that Finn is most definitely cheating on her. So now, no matter what, it’s not going to be special at all.

 

* * *

 

After school, Clarke rage-walks back to the Blakes’ house. She still needs to reply to Raven, but she’s decided to break up with Finn first. Tonight. At the game. Octavia had to stay a half hour after school to take a math test because she has special accomodations for additional time. Having no one else to turn to, she calls her mom’s practice.

When Jackson answers, Clarke says, “Can I talk to my mom?”

“Hey, Clarke. Looks like she’s between patients, just a sec.”

She listens to the tenor sax hold music. The hand holding up her phone is going numb from cold. She didn’t bring a proper jacket today because she didn’t think the temperature would fucking _plummet,_ and she wishes Bellamy wouldn’t be such a dick so she could have driven home with him in his nice warm truck.

“What’s wrong?” Abby asks when she comes on the line. Clarke used to call her work all the time when she was a kid, but once she turned eleven, she got a cell phone, and her mom told her to text instead so she could call Clarke back between patients, exceptions made for emergencies. This feels like an emergency.

“Bellamy gave me a detention. A _Saturday_ detention.” Her eyes are stinging. She’s never gotten a detention before, and even though it’s a stupid one, it still makes her feel gross. Like she’s a bad student.

“You’re going to have to unpack that a little. Octavia’s brother gave you a detention?”

God, it really shows how little they talk that Abby doesn’t even know Bellamy is her teacher now.

“Bellamy is the substitute for my history teacher who’s on maternity leave, and he gave me a detention and it’s not _fair.”_

Abby seems to choose her words carefully: “What’s the detention for?” Not, _What did you do?_

“Texting in class.”

“Is that against the rules?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a big rule?”

A tear drips down Clarke’s face. She wipes it away roughly with the side of her hand and gets angrier at herself for crying. “Kind of, but everyone does it all the time and it’s not fair he singled me out for it.”

“Well, he’s known you a long time. He probably has higher standards for you than everyone else.”

“That’s the _definition_ of unfair.”

“I don’t know, Clarke. I’m sorry you’re upset, but it sounds like you broke a rule thinking you could get away with it because it’s Bellamy, and he caught you. You hang out with him all the time. Is it really so bad to spend a Saturday morning with him?”

“I guess not.”

Clarke arrives at the Blakes’ house and punches in the code. When the door opens, the garage is empty, Bellamy still at school and Aurora at work. When there are no cars, she can see the discoloration in the concrete from the time Bellamy fell and cracked his head open. It makes her sick to look at so she squeezes her eyes shut until she knows she’s past it.

“Will it go on any kind of record?” Abby asks. “Will it hurt your chances to get into college?”

“No.”

“So it’s not a big deal.”

There’s so much more to the story, she thinks. Abby doesn’t even know about her boyfriend, let alone that he’s a mean lying dirtbag. And then there’s the whole Bellamy thing, the kissing and the getting-off, and that Clarke isn't as mad at the detention as she is about him getting in her way and abusing his authority to be an overprotective jerk. The worst part is that she’s not even that hurt by Finn cheating on her, it’s mostly the principle of the thing, the sheer audacity and shittiness of it. And if she’s being completely honest with herself, she’s mostly super bummed she can’t sleep with him now, and what does that say about her?

“You’re not mad at me?” Clarke asks.

And there’s also the real reason she called: she’s afraid of her mom being disappointed in her for getting in trouble. Beneath that, she’s more afraid Abby doesn’t care anyway, hasn’t cared for a long time. But that’s a fear she carries with her everywhere. She’s used to it.

“Honey, no. I don’t expect you to follow every rule you’re given. Sometimes you have to face the consequences of breaking those rules but maybe not let yourself care about them. Like getting a speeding ticket. It doesn’t have any bearing on who you are.”

“Okay.” Clarke wipes her wet nose with the back of her hand. She drops her backpack in Octavia’s room and falls onto the bed. “Thanks, Mom.”

 

* * *

 

Octavia gets home fifteen minutes later and crawls into bed beside her, slumping face-down onto her pillow and groaning. “I hate math.” She lifts her head and adds, “How can a test make me physically tired? Cheerleading doesn’t make my brain tired.”

“You told Bellamy about the hotel,” Clarke says. It’s not a question. She just knows.

Octavia offers the same concerned eyebrow-wrinkle Bellamy gets. “Was I not supposed to?”

Clarke sighs. Fucking Blake family honesty.

“It’s fine.”

“What happened?”

The detention slip is balled in her fist. She hands it over. The paper crinkles as Octavia opens it.

“He gave you a Saturday detention?”

“Yep.”

Octavia has always been self-conscious about her intelligence because school is hard for her, but she’s quick where it counts: processing the consequences of petty drama.

“What a fucking cockblock,” she concludes, correctly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think he’d go all protective-older-brother on you, too.”

“It’s okay.”

“But you can still do it, right? You reserved the hotel for Friday night.”

She pulls up Messenger on her phone and hands it over. Octavia reads Raven’s messages.

“Holy shitballs. What a day.”

“I don’t know how to reply.”

“You should tell her.”

Clarke remembers the way Finn snapped at her when she only mentioned the idea of him being a liar. There’s no telling what he’d do if she got involved in his relationship. Maybe she should just break up with him and leave Raven in the dark.

“I don’t know,” Clarke says. “It’s not my business.”

“It’s totally your business.”

The back door opens and slams shut, followed by a clanging of keys dropping onto the counter, the thunk of a heavy stack of folders.

“Papa’s home,” Octavia says.

His footsteps echo down the hallway, then stop abruptly in front of Octavia’s open door. Clarke lifts her head to glare at him. He looks remorseful, at least, and annoyingly hot in his stupid suit, but before either of them can say anything, Octavia gets up and shuts the door in his face.

“No cockblocks allowed,” she says to the closed door.

 

* * *

 

Clarke tells Finn the next morning that they have to cancel the night’s plans because of her detention. She steels herself against an attack, an insult maybe, blaming her for being careless, an idiot. It’s only then she realizes, hands gripping her textbook over her chest so tightly the hardcover is digging into her palms, that this is not an okay reaction to have toward anyone, ever. Bellamy was right about her hesitations not being normal — she should have listened to her instincts sooner. She should have never gone to homecoming with Finn or agreed to date him. She’s been so stupid. This mess is all her fault.

Surprisingly he takes it well, disappointed but he says he understands.

“It’s not your fault Blake is a fucking fascist,” he adds. “I swear I’m gonna kill that guy. Slit his motherfucking throat.”

For a second she falters. His kindness was too unexpected, his response to Bellamy too violent. He’s very good at the bad things he does. He knows how to pull the rug out from under her, always a single step beyond a reasonable response.

“I’ll see you at the game tonight?” she asks.

“Yeah, definitely.”

He leans in to kiss her and she wants to gag. When she pulls away, Bellamy is approaching on his usual route. This time he doesn’t say anything to them; he’s not even looking at her, but at Finn, face placid with a hint of a threat underneath. Finn is glaring back, following Bellamy with his eyes as he walks past, like two dogs circling each other, waiting to see who will lunge first.

 

* * *

 

The last football game of the season. The weather has taken a sharp upturn from yesterday, so the temperature is bearable. Octavia cheers in a high ponytail and a turtleneck and tights, green and gold all over, with a perfect smile Bellamy paid for with his part-time job as a mechanic, a gig he had all through high school, summers in college, and which he sometimes still does on weekends for extra cash. Jasper and Monty are front and center on the bleachers supporting their girlfriends. Clarke is sitting with them because she can’t find her own soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, or Bellamy, or any of her other friends, or even Murphy. It feels weird to just sit and watch the game, but then again, she reasons, this is her last one _ever,_ unless Bellamy is wrong about her moving away and she ends up staying in town like him.

The thought strikes her in a new way: she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want to be one of those people who cares about high school football, who gets trapped in her tiny hometown and never goes anywhere or does anything. She hasn’t actually put a lot of thought into college yet even though applications are due soon; she assumed she’d just go to community college for a while, get her gen ed requirements out of the way while she figured stuff out. But now she wonders if she should go somewhere bigger, far away.

She watches a boy in a green jersey run across the field with the football tucked safely under his arm while boys in black jerseys chase him. She’d like to travel, she thinks. She could definitely do it. Her mom would pay for it, and if not, Clarke has a trust fund she can tap into that her dad set up for her when she was a baby. She’s never had to or been allowed to use it, but once she’s eighteen, it’s all hers. She’s never been out of the country before. Suddenly the thought thrills her, to leave Arcadia, at least for a while. To go far away, wherever she wants for as long as she wants.

When she returns from her daydreams what feels like hours later, the game feels surreal, like she’s already left and come back to this place and therefore can see it, appreciate it, in a new light. It’s kind of fun, watching the game happen, feeling the energy of the crowd and being in the center of it, not huddled off to the side getting high on concession grease fumes. She wishes she had come to sit in the stands before now, at other games. Not out of high school yet, and she already has regrets.

After a particularly rowdy cheer for a play she must have missed somehow, Finn comes and sits beside her. His hands are stuffed in the pockets of his ugly green jacket and he’s not smiling, not looking at her. “Can we talk for a sec? In private?”

“Yeah, sure.” She’s relieved, actually. She’d been dreading pulling him aside to break up with him, and now he’s opened the door for her.

She looks to Monty and says, “I’ll be right back,” but he’s too preoccupied with the game to notice.

Finn leads her down from the bleachers, past the concession stand alcove which in their absence has been taken over by sophomores, the torch officially passed on. He takes her past the bathrooms, past the stadium entrance, and into a dark patch of grass near the outermost fence where Finn and Murphy usually go to chew tobacco or get high or whatever they do. She’s never been over here. The grass is high, the ground soft. Mud sticks to her shoes and suctions them down with each step.

She’s so preoccupied navigating around the deepest mud puddles that it takes her a moment to realize he’s cornered her. Her back is to the cornerpost of the fence. She can’t move right or left. And now he’s in front of her, in her space, and he does not look happy.

He pulls an iPhone out of his pocket, clicks around on it, and shows it to her. “Is this you?”

It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the light. On the screen is a grab of her Messenger conversation with Raven.

“Where did you get an iPhone? I thought you had a flip phone.”

“Tell me. Is this you contacting Raven Reyes?”

“Who’s Raven Reyes?”

He slaps her. Open-handed, not hard, just enough to shock her. Her jaw goes slack, and for a second she’s too stunned to react.

“Don’t fuck around with me, Clarke. Did you or did you not message Raven?”

She holds her hand to her face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He yanks her hand down and slaps her again, harder, this time clapping her ear, and it _does_ hurt. It’s deafening, disorienting. The ground shifts under her feet but she can’t move to catch her balance, reaches out and grabs the fence instead. Her left shoe sinks into the mud, wet seeping into her sock. She tries to pull it out, but loses her balance completely. The fence bears all of her weight.

He takes a deep breath and a small step back. “Please be honest with me. I really like you, Clarke.”

For a second he sounds like his old self, the Finn she met at lunch on the first day of school who was sweet and funny. She thinks he’s going to drop it, take her back to their seats and finish watching the game. But it’s something in the way he says, _I really like you, Clarke._ It sounds like he’s saying, _I don’t want to have to do this._

“You’re scaring me,” she says, hoping to jar some sense into him. “Let’s just go watch the game, okay?”

“We can’t.”

Her left ear is still ringing. The side of her face throbs.

“Jasper brought some edibles,” she offers. “Brownies this time. We can get a little high, go to Steak ‘n Shake maybe. I’ll buy you a burger. A shake. The entire menu if you want.” She laughs, like it’s a funny joke, how much he eats.

He pockets the phone, steps closer again, reaches up and runs his fingers over a lock of her hair. “I told you it upsets me when people get in my business. You did it anyway. You went behind my back. You stalked me. I was a good boyfriend to you, and you betrayed me.”

“I didn’t. I promise I —”

She stops short when pulls something out of his pocket. Flips it. Floodlights from the stadium entrance glint off the blade.

“Finn. Put the knife away. This is not a knife situation.”

“I know you’re lying to me. I know this account is yours. I went to this chick’s profile and the only thing on it is a stupid article you showed me the same day the profile was made. Quit fucking lying to me.”

There’s nothing she can do. Admit it, and he’ll get angry and stab her. Deny it, and he’ll get angry and stab her. So she stays silent. On the field, the halftime march has started. The band is playing “Hang On Sloopy.” If she were to scream, no one would hear her. Her ankle is twisted awkwardly in the mud. A jagged piece of fence wire digs into her palm.

He huffs in frustration at her silence, shoves her against the fence. Her head hits the fencepost hard and she grits her teeth. The only thing holding her up is his forearm crushing her chest. He puts the knife to her throat. Her ear is ringing, her head throbbing, and it takes her too many seconds to register the piercing pain at her neck, like the split-second after a papercut before the bleeding starts.

“I thought we could have fun, Clarke. I thought we could have a good, easy time. A new beginning, that’s what I kept calling you.” He lets up for a second only to rattle her back against the post, dig the knife a little deeper, but she can’t feel anything anymore, not her toes or fingers or the breath in her lungs. “I need you to promise me you won’t tell her about us, okay?”

She can’t nod, but she manages a whispered, “I promise.”

“Say, ‘I promise I won’t tell Raven about our relationship.’”

Somehow, her voice remains steady. “I promise I won’t tell Raven about our relationship.”

“There’s no way to keep you from telling her,” he says as if to himself, a realization, anger turning to panic, which is worse. Anger is predictable; panic, though…

“You can trust me. I won’t. I swear.”

“You betrayed my trust once, you can do it again. I don’t — I can’t lose her, Clarke. She’s everything to me.”

“I understand. Put the knife away and we can talk about it, okay?”

“I can’t. I’ll let you go and then you’ll tell everyone I threatened you, and I’ll get expelled again. And then you’ll go and tell Raven anyway. As soon as this moment’s over, I’ll have lost everything. _Everything.”_ He’s shaking; the knife trembles at her throat. His expression is completely blank, eyes empty. Like looking into the eyes of an animal. All instinct now. No predicting which way he’ll move, not that she ever could.

“I won’t tell anyone. I’ll get in my car and go straight home.”

“I have to do it now. You’ve made me do it.”

The knife digs in a little deeper and she can feel it, the breaking of skin, a trickle of warmth sliding down her neck. She was six, the first time she remembers seeing her own blood. Aurora had taken Octavia to get her kindergarten booster shots. Bellamy was left babysitting Clarke. He decided that day was the day, the day they’d been preparing for. Clarke was going to ride a bike. He ran alongside her, one hand on the back of the seat, another on the handlebar. Then he let go. Clarke rode down the sidewalk for a few seconds, then got scared of the train tracks looming ahead and tried to brake. Lost control and fell hard onto the asphalt. Scraped her hands and knees. Flecks of skin, spots of red. Bellamy swept her into his arms as she wailed, brought her inside, set her on the kitchen counter and wet a paper towel to get all the dirt off.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” he said. He was fourteen. Back then he seemed so old; she thought he was an adult, up there with her mom and dad and Aurora. Brave, always. Now, she sees how scared for her he’d been. How he must have thought it was his fault. He shouldn’t have let go of the handlebars so soon. He should have given her another week or two on training wheels.

“I’m sorry, Clarke,” Finn says.

She takes a deep breath. Closes her eyes.

A rush of sprinting footsteps. She opens her eyes just in time to see a large body slam into Finn’s side. The knife twists flat before sliding away. She brings her hand up to her throat. Her fingers come back shining in the dark. The cut feels shallow, small.

The man pushes Finn into the fence with such force that a wave ripples all the way down. They slip on the grass and fall into the mud. He grapples the knife out of Finn’s hand by digging a knee into his sternum, both his hands on Finn’s wrist, slamming his fist repeatedly into the ground. Finn lets go of the knife. The man takes it and climbs off of him. Finn scuttles back a few feet, and the man stands up.

A slat of light catches his face, but she knew before that, knew the shape of his body in the dark, the way it moved. The way he always seems to know when she needs him.

Bellamy closes the knife and tucks it in his back pocket, and immediately his hands are on her. He tilts her chin up and inspects the cut. Mud streaks the side of his face. He takes several heaving breaths. His hands are warm and gentle where they rest on either side of her neck.

She tries to say “I’m fine,” but what comes out is, “Bellamy,” because Finn has made it to his feet.

“This is all your fucking —” He spins Bellamy around at the shoulder and throws a punch across his face. It doesn’t make a cracking sound but a thumping one, like hearing someone drop something heavy a floor above you. “— _fault.”_

The halftime march has ended. A few stragglers have come to watch what all the commotion is about. They keep their distance, but a few have their phones out to record it.

Bellamy staggers back and Finn shakes his hand like he’s never punched someone before.

“Did he just punch a teacher?” someone says.

“Dude, the new guy punched a teacher!”

“Get him, Mr. Blake!”

Finn’s empty-sighted rage crumbles immediately as Bellamy takes a step toward him. He looks like a sad, scared kid who’s about to lose both his girlfriends, get expelled, and probably go to jail. Clarke almost feels sorry for him. But not really.

Bellamy raises his fist and brings it down in the middle of Finn's face. Clarke can hear the crack his nose makes. Blood pours out of his nostrils and he’s making gurgling noises in his throat, presumably in an attempt to shout. Bellamy throws another punch, but Finn blocks with his arm and Bellamy’s fist lands against the side of his head. Finn stumbles back, falls, tries to catch himself on the fence but fails, slides down sideways, scrambling for purchase.

Bellamy bends over him, drags him up by his jacket. He speaks so quietly Clarke can barely hear him above the wail of sirens approaching: “You come near her again, I’ll kill you.”

He throws two more punches. The first Finn manages to dodge so it hits the side of his neck; the second lands squarely with his jaw. Bellamy lets go of his jacket, and Finn's entire body sags into the mud.

Blue and red lights flash across the field. The sirens fall abruptly silent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> • At the beginning of the chapter, Clarke confronts Finn about his college visits. He reacts aggressively by grabbing her wrist, gaslighting her into believing she's in the wrong for going behind his back, and verbally assaulting her.  
> • At the end of the chapter, Finn finds out Clarke contacted Raven and sequesters her at the back of the football field, where he physically assaults her, puts a knife to her throat, and threatens to kill her. 
> 
> A Very Official Author's Note:
> 
> lol bye finn


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am terribly embarrassed to discover that Arcadia, Ohio is a real place. I thought I made it up. So if you're from Arcadia and are wondering why the distance to Columbus is so wildly incorrect, my sincerest apologies. I did not know you existed.
> 
> Warnings in end note.

Clarke wakes up the next morning to a light knock on the door. When she opens her eyes, she sees Octavia’s peaceful sleeping face about a foot away. Despite the knocking, Octavia doesn’t stir. The clock on the bedside table reads six-thirty. The bedroom is freezing and Clarke is only wearing one of Octavia’s old cheerleading camp t-shirts and a pair of fleece bottoms with little cows on them. Before getting up, she tugs the blanket over Octavia’s shoulder.

She opens the door to find Bellamy, fully dressed for a regular day of school sans suit jacket (which means he’s wearing a leather jacket over a button-up shirt and tie, which is _rude_ ), stack of papers and thermos and keys in hand like he’s ready to walk out the door.

A dark, ugly bruise reaches from his temple past and across his cheekbone, a small line like a dash where the skin split. A red scrape dots the side of his chin from what must have been the grappling.

He asks in a loud whisper, “Why aren’t you ready?”

“Ready for what?” she loud-whispers back.

He looks at her like she’s stupid.

“Oh my god,” she says. “You can’t possibly expect me to serve my detention after what happened.”

“I don’t have the authority to cancel a detention.”

“But you have the authority to dole them out for no good reason.”

“Do you want me to show you the student handbook?”

“God, of course you read the student handbook.”

“I had to. I’m a teacher.”

“And you probably liked it, you fucking nerd.”

He makes a little huffing sound through his nose, which she refuses to think is cute. “The rhetoric reminded me of —”

“Oh, my god. Stop.”

After last night, she thought everything would finally be okay between them, that things would either go back to normal or amp up, and they’d have a nice, adult chat about their feelings. And by that she means, she kind of expected Bellamy, out of fear of her loss, to confess his undying love for her, and also his seething, all-consuming jealousy of Finn, and how he never wants anyone else to touch her ever again.

But those were just her adrenaline-addled daydreams while a paramedic prodded her and she waited around to give her report to the police. Now, in the light of day, she sees how ridiculous that daydream had really been. Bellamy is still her teacher for the next month or so, and also her best friend’s older brother, and what would they do when she goes away to college?

“Do I have to wear a uniform?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says. “‘When serving a Saturday detention, the student must dress for a regular day of school.’”

“I can’t _believe_ you just quoted the student handbook from memory.”

“Five minutes. I’ll meet you in the truck.”

Normally she keeps a few outfits at the Blakes’ house for the weekends, but she doesn’t keep any school uniforms here because she goes home on weeknights. For years she and Octavia could share clothes, but Clarke grew curves and Octavia didn’t, so now they’re different sizes. But she doesn’t have a choice, so she grabs a shirt and skirt from Octavia’s closet. She takes off her nightshirt — careful not to disturb the small butterfly bandage on her neck — to put on her bra, but picks it up and sees the giant brown-red blood stain on it. She refuses to wear it under a white shirt, and she can’t wear one of Octavia’s bras, she’d pop right out of it.

So she decides to go without.

She puts on the shirt and pulls her hair out of it and buttons it over her bare chest, then steps into the skirt which will only barely zip up over her hips and gets bunched a little at the waist. She rolls the waistband a few times to get rid of the bunching, which makes the hem several inches too short, but she doesn’t care. She just doesn’t fucking care.

And, of course, she has no clean underwear. Fuck underwear, too. It’s just Bellamy, and he’s pretty much seen her naked already.

She throws her hair into a loose braid, grabs her backpack, and slings it over her shoulder. Octavia, who once slept through a fire drill in study hall, hasn't even rolled over during the exchange.

In the truck, Clarke carefully tucks her skirt under herself, and it’s only when she’s sitting down she sees how short she made it.

Bellamy doesn’t notice. “Where’s your coat?”

“Covered in blood.”

She doesn’t know if dry cleaning offers blood-removal service but she’ll have to see. Bellamy pulls off his leather jacket and tosses it in her lap. She covers herself with it like a blanket and, as he backs out of the driveway, rests her head against the window.

“This is ridiculous,” she mutters as the neighborhood passes by. “You’re driving me to a detention _you_ gave me that _you’re_ overseeing. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t make the rules, Clarke.”

Oh, and she’s Clarke now, too. Great. Gone are the days of being a brat princess. And forget sweetheart and baby, out of the question. Forever more she’ll be known as Clarke or Ms. Griffin.

“You just enforce them, right?”

He doesn’t say anything to that, doesn’t even acknowledge it, so she lets the conversation drop and closes her eyes. It occurs to her that maybe he’s actually, finally mad at her, and that’s why he’s punishing her. He’s mad that she got involved with a psychopath, that she didn’t run away at the first sign of trouble, that she got herself into a life-or-death situation last night from which he had to save her, and, who knows, he might lose his job over the fact he punched a student in the face.

All of that remains to be seen. Clarke hasn’t even told her mom, who left town after work yesterday and won’t be back until Monday. She doesn’t even know where Abby is; her phone is probably off. The police took Finn into custody last night and his bail is set at a thousand dollars. They said something about how she can press charges if she wants, but that feels like a Monday problem.

She had been sitting in the ambulance when they talked to her. She’s proud that she didn’t cry at all. Didn’t feel anything, really. They told her she was in shock. She had trouble paying attention to the questions, kept looking through the crowd at Bellamy, who was speaking to two officers. Someone had given him an ice pack for his face, but he held it to his fist instead. At one point he looked over at her as if he had known she was staring, and their eyes met, and he had his familiar curious-concerned expression: _Are you okay?_

Only Bellamy Blake would tackle a knife-wielding maniac to the ground and then wonder if Clarke was okay.

The football game continued on, most people oblivious to the drama aftermath unfolding in the parking lot. The ambulance, the police, and the onlookers had all dispersed before the game even ended. Clarke had driven herself back to the Blakes’ house because it was closer than her own, knowing Bellamy had to wait for Octavia to bring her home after the game. She’d thought maybe the adrenaline would keep her awake, but she fell asleep in Octavia’s bed before they made it home. Octavia woke her up around ten to make sure she was okay, and she said she was, and fell right back asleep.

The knuckles of Bellamy’s right hand are purple and swollen where they grip the steering wheel, a few of them scraped raw.

The parking lot is empty so they take the coveted spot by the side door, which is nearest to Bellamy’s classroom. Bellamy has to use his key to open the door, which he holds open for Clarke to pass through under his arm, and then he has to unlock the classroom door, too. He closes it behind him.

Clarke takes a seat at her usual desk. Bellamy takes the table at the front instead of his desk in the corner. It’s the table he usually sits on to teach, feet swinging, legs apart, tapping a beat on the edge while he waits for everyone to quiet down after the bell rings. It’s where they lay their tests when they’re done with them, and Bellamy looks up at every single student and says thank you, which doesn’t make sense to her; why be thankful to someone for taking a test? Shouldn’t they be thanking him for teaching them all the stuff on it? She always wants to say something to his test-completion thank-you, something clever and flirty. Sometimes she expects something other than a thank-you from him, some indication that she’s special, different from all the other students. She wants him to take her test off the stack and grade it right in front of her while she stands there watching — a red checkmark on each question, her breath held. And he’ll get to the end of all fifty questions and she’ll have gotten every single one correct. He’d be surprised and impressed, and ask how long she studied, and she’ll say, “I didn’t, it just comes naturally,” but actually it’s because of his teaching; the way he conveys information has always fit the way she stores it, and he’ll tell her what a good job she did. How smart she is. How she can do anything.

But that never happens. She just puts her test on the stack and goes right back to her seat to start the next day’s reading.

Bellamy is directly in front of her with nothing between them but desks, just a few feet away, and she can see his legs under the table, so she realizes, belatedly, he can see hers too, and that’s when she remembers she’s not wearing underwear. He probably didn’t notice, but still, she crosses her legs and tugs down her skirt as subtly as she can.

She gets out her history textbook and opens it to chapter eight, moves her eyes along the page, but the words aren’t letting her read them. Bellamy is grading, and based on the stack of blue books, he gave some poor class an essay exam. She watches him for a moment; he reads and reads, then makes a long underline and dips his head closer to the desk to write. He writes with his entire hand curled over the pen, dragging it along the page with a series of pointed, sharp movements, seemingly undeterred by the state of his battered knuckles.

Then it hits her — this is a real detention. Somewhere in the back of her mind, its absurdity made a home in her imagination. She thought it was an excuse for something, a talk maybe, or the love confession she’s dying for. Best case scenario, a filthy romp in an empty classroom. Or, worst, after last night, maybe he’d spend the time chewing her out about Finn, about putting her life in danger, putting _his_ life in danger, how it’s all her fault.

But no. It’s just a fucking detention. He’s really not going to talk about it. About anything that happened. About the fact that he intentionally prevented Clarke from losing her virginity to Finn, that Finn tried to kill her last night, that Bellamy saved her life, that Finn is now in jail, and after all this chaos, they’ve still, somehow, found their way to detention.

She can’t believe it.

 

* * *

 

Clarke nods off around eight-thirty. Bellamy wakes her up with a sharp, “Clarke.”

“Sorry,” she mutters, tries to focus her eyes on the page, which is telling her something about Napoleon, she thinks.

Another few minutes pass. There’s so much to talk about, so much she wants to say. She used to be able to talk to him about anything, but it feels like everything has changed in such a short time, and now the words won’t come.

The paramedics told her it might take a while for the shock to wear off. For the gravity of what happened to set in. They gave her a crisis hotline number and a little pamphlet of information. She didn’t believe them. She was fine. It was just another ridiculous thing that had happened to her, another story to tell, another item crossed off her Growing-Up list: asshole ex-boyfriend. Check. Done. Glad it’s over and she can laugh about it now.

But she doesn’t laugh. Nothing at all has happened, she can’t feel anything, but somehow the words in her textbook start to warp and bend. A big wet drop falls in the middle of the page, and another. She gasps because it’s not her book, it’s the school’s, and she has to give it back at the end of the year for another student to use. She’s not allowed to leave a mark, a smudge, any indication it’s already been read. Maybe the next person who has this book will have Bellamy as a substitute teacher, but they won’t know what the smudge is on page 182. They won’t know it has anything to do with him.

That’s what breaks her: the thought of Bellamy’s future students. The thought of Bellamy’s future, of their futures on diverging paths. Next year she probably won’t even be here. She’ll be too busy to text him, won’t have any reason to, and would never want to bother him just to say hello. And for him, the same. He’s never once reached out to her just to talk. He never would. He’s not that kind of guy.

And after last night, why would he want to?

She swallows over and over, can’t catch her breath. Closes her textbook. Wipes her running nose with her hand. Her body starts to tremble, pulse thudding rapidly in her ears.

“I need to go to the bathr —” Her voice catches on the last syllable and comes out a rasp. She stands up quickly and runs out the door, rushes down the hallway, past her locker, the spot where Finn used to hold her hand between second and third period, the spot where she got her first strike from Bellamy. A single sob echoes in the empty hall, and she pushes open the bathroom door, runs to the handicap stall and slams it closed. Locks it. Hovers for a minute over the toilet thinking she might puke, but nothing comes, not even a dry heave. She staggers back against the wall, slides down it, holds her knees to her chest.

She lets go, then. Resigns herself to the obliterating rush of weeping. She hasn’t cried this hard in years, since she was a kid, twelve maybe, the first time her mom went on one of her trips and left her at the Blakes’ house for an entire week. Clarke thought she’d done something wrong, something to push Abby away. No, she thought there was something wrong _in_ her, some passive, permanent part of her being that her mother detested. Sometimes she thinks it’s her fault her dad died. She doesn’t know how; she had nothing to do with the accident, but the way her mom looks at her sometimes —

That same guilt comes flooding back. Her head starts to throb. Her ears ring. Her tongue tastes like salt from snot and tears.

She almost misses the squeal of hinges. She can see Bellamy’s feet under the stalls and she curls tighter around herself, wills herself to silence, but heavy breaths and little whimpers keep coming out of her throat.

Bellamy stops outside the stall. The door rattles lightly as he tries unsuccessfully to open it.

“Clarke,” he says.

“Go away,” she manages, but the upper register of her voice is gone. What comes out is a scratched, broken sound, only the bottom parts of all the words. “You’re not allowed to be in here.”

“The school is empty.”

“Go read the handbook.”

He sighs.

She squeezes her eyes shut as tightly as she can and the blood-rushing noise gets louder.

She hears Bellamy shift around. The jingle of keys and coins in his pockets — always has change. Always pays in cash, doesn’t have a credit card to his name. Why does she know all these things about him? She’s an encyclopedia of Bellamy Blake. She imagines herself back in his classroom, looking down on a fill-in-the-answer test.

What is Bellamy’s favorite fruit? Clementines in January. Watermelon in July. Oranges the rest of the year.

What is Bellamy’s favorite movie? _Cool Hand Luke_ when he’s happy, _Office Space_ when he’s sad. And though he’d never admit it, any Disney or Pixar movie will do in a pinch.

What does Bellamy do when he can’t sleep? He drinks chamomile tea — the only time he drinks tea, ever — and goes through the old photo albums his mom keeps under the coffee table.

What is Bellamy’s greatest fear? Losing Octavia. Losing Aurora. Losing Clarke.

Has Bellamy ever been in love? Has Bellamy ever had his heart broken? She doesn’t know. She may never know.

Bellamy would get a perfect score on a Clarke test, but Clarke wouldn’t get a perfect score on a Bellamy test. She wonders if she’ll ever let anyone else know her as well as he does.

She hears the crack of his bad knee and opens her eyes. He’s sitting down now too, against the same wall she is. She can only see his hips and dress shoes.

He pushes a box of tissues under the stall, then a bottle of water. She pulls a tissue out and blows her nose, then another and wipes her eyes, then a third to keep balled in her fist. She cracks open the water bottle and drinks half of it. Lowers it. Takes what feels like her first real breath in minutes. It comes in staggering.

Her voice is small and quiet when she speaks next. Even to her own ears, she sounds like a kid: “I’m sorry.”

He’s silent for a beat. She can’t decipher what that silence means, whether he’s thinking through his response or maybe not planning to respond at all.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he says. His words come out thick. She wonders if he’s been crying too.

“It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. I knew you didn’t want me to date him and I did it anyway. I knew there was something wrong and I didn’t listen to my own instincts. And I provoked him. I stalked him. I found his girlfriend and his whole other life and — I still wanted to have sex with him. If you didn’t stop me I would have had sex with a psychopath.”

She doesn’t want to think about what would have happened in the hotel room. Maybe at some point she would have chickened out and he wouldn’t have taken no for an answer. The thought makes her go cold all over.

“There’s nothing I can say to make you believe me,” Bellamy says, “so you just have to trust me. Do you still trust me?”

She trusts him more than the gravity that keeps her tethered to earth. She would sooner watch an apple float away than believe Bellamy could ever do anything to hurt her.

But she can’t say that. She can’t say anything. She’s caught up in trying not to cry again, takes quick, sharp breaths, and when she looks down Bellamy’s hand is under the stall door, palm up, fingers apart. An invitation. So she slots her hand in his, her small bony fingers between his thick stubby ones, careful not to hurt his bruised knuckles.

“I trust you,” she says, barely a rasp. Then: “Are you — are you mad at me, though?”

“What? You think I’m mad at you?”

“For bringing all this to you. For inflicting myself on you.”

“Clarke,” he begins, as if he’s offended. “I’ve never been mad at you in my life.”

Another long silence. She focuses on the feeling of his hand in hers, hot and dry and so callused it feels like sandpaper. Knuckles still swollen. She stares straight ahead at the toilet paper dispenser and the teal blue paint and the triangle-shaped chip which exposes the old color, rust red. She wasn’t here when the stalls were red. She wonders when they painted them.

“No, that’s a lie,” he says. “Do you remember those roller skates you used to have? The silver ones?”

She laughs so suddenly that it comes out as a cough. “You mean the ones you tripped over?”

“I mean the ones _you_ left in the middle of the garage.”

“You wouldn’t have tripped over them if you hadn’t been out past curfew — wait.” She stops, finds the upper-hand already. “What was it you were doing again?”

He pauses. “Miller took me cow-tipping.”

“And is cow-tipping a real thing?”

“No.”

“So what was it that ended up happening?”

“We got the cops called on us for trespassing.”

“Exactly. If you’d just googled it before you left, you wouldn’t have bothered, and you would have stayed home and never slipped on the skates and broken your head open. So whose fault is it really?”

“You should really consider law school.”

She had been the one to hear the crash, Octavia being too heavy a sleeper and Aurora at the other end of the house, box fan always on for white noise. Clarke went out in her nightgown, barefoot, to the garage. The light was off. She reached up on her tiptoes and flicked it on. That was when she saw the blood, spreading out in a pool under the tires of Aurora’s old Corsica. Bellamy let out a low, pained groan, and Clarke, curiosity getting the best of her, crossed the front of the car to see. He was lying on his back, his arm bent underneath him. He could have been asleep except for the angle of his arm and the gash in his head. Her skate had slid down the driveway and into the grass.

“Do you remember what happened after?” Clarke asks.

“Mom had to drive me to the hospital, but she couldn’t leave you and Octavia alone because the sight of blood put you in hysterics. I had to sit in the back of the car calming _you_ down while I was bleeding all over the place.”

“I wasn’t crying because of the blood,” she admits. “It was because I knew I’d done something to hurt you. I knew I should have put the skates away, and I didn’t, because we never got in trouble for anything so nothing we did mattered. It was so — I don’t know. It freaked me out that you could even be hurt, that I could be the one to do it. I thought you were invincible. I couldn’t handle the idea that you weren’t. And then it was like — what if something happened to you? Who would take care of me if you were gone? No one else wanted me.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s not like I could articulate existential despair.”

“I’ve always wanted you, you know. I’ve always been grateful to have you in our family.”

She needs another tissue after that, can’t even properly cry anymore, just tears leaking out of her face. She rests her head against the wall and closes her eyes. “If I ask you something, do you promise to be honest with me? And by that I mean, no turning my questions back around on me.”

“I can try.”

“Did you change your hallway route between second and third period so you could keep Finn from kissing me?”

“Yes.”

“Did you switch your lunch duty with Pike to keep an eye on me?

“Yes.”

“Did you give me a detention for the sole purpose of stopping me from sleeping with Finn?”

“This is making me sound like a creep.”

“Answer the question.”

“Yes.”

“Were you following Finn and me at the football game last night?”

“No.”

“So what happened?”

“I was late because I was running some errands for Mom, and when I got there, I just happened to see you, over in that corner where people always get into shady shit. I didn’t know it was you, though. I mean I did know, but I don’t know how I knew. It was just a feeling. So I got closer and it was you with Finn, and at first it looked like you were making out with him, but then it became pretty clear that wasn’t what was happening. So I intervened.”

“So what was plan B? If the detention didn’t stop me, I mean.”

“I was going to call your mom, tip her off to look at her credit card statement so she could bust you.”

“Low blow.” And anyway, it wouldn’t have worked. Abby wouldn’t have picked up or listened to the voicemail, and probably doesn’t have Bellamy’s number stored. Even if she did, she’d probably just be mildly irritated, remind Clarke to use a condom and tell her to have a good time.

“I know. I was desperate.”

“You could have just asked me not to sleep with him.”

“Would you have listened?”

“It would depend on the way you phrased it.”

“‘Clarke, you’re about to go to bed with the biggest creep in a hundred-mile radius, please don’t do that.’”

“Try, ‘It’s killing me to see you with someone who treats you poorly, and by the way I’m mad with jealousy.’”

“I wasn’t jealous.”

“You totally were. Is the thought of me sleeping with someone really that bad to you?”

“If that person is a homicidal nutbag, yes, absolutely.”

“But what if he hadn’t been? What if it had been, I don’t know, somebody like Adam.”

“Zucker? Come on. That kid picks his nose and sticks it under the desk.”

In second grade, Adam Zucker gave Clarke a Care Bears valentine. Since then she’s always had a soft spot for him, even though they’ve never really been friends. She adamantly defends him whenever anyone refers to him as Adam Fucker or Sucker behind his back. He has a big social circle, spends most of his time doing stagehand work for drama club. Lighting and sound, she thinks. They’re friends on Facebook and sometimes like each other’s posts. Adam Zucker is a solid middle-of-the-road choice.

“But he’s cute, and he’s not threatening at all. What if I had decided to sleep with him? Would you still have tried to sabotage me?”

“What do you want from me, Clarke?”

“Blake family honesty. The truth, at all costs, even when it’s ugly.”

He makes a frustrated noise. His palm has gotten sweaty and his hand fidgets in hers. “Yes. Okay? Yes, in any scenario, I would try to stop you. I don’t want you to have sex with anyone.”

“Except you.”

She can hear the click of his throat as he swallows. It’s the loudest sound in the room. She’d give anything to see his face.

“Except me,” he says.

“When did you first realize it? That you wanted me.”

He lets out a long sigh. “I don't know. Sometime after I came home from college. Before you came into my room that day. At first it was — fuck, I sound like such a pervert. It was that little bikini you used to wear. You’d grown out of it the year before so it looked like you were about to pop right out. I considered messing with the chlorine so you couldn’t use the pool anymore. I asked Mom if I could take the whole thing down. But it only would have made it worse. At least with the pool you were outside. No pool, you would have been walking around the house half-naked. So I shut myself in my room and told you I was playing Skyrim.”

She remembers asking if he would teach her how to play, or at least let her watch, and he always said no and shut the door in her face. She’d been so excited for him to graduate from college and come home, but that summer it was like he wasn’t himself anymore. She thought he hated her, and only when the weather cooled down did he seem to warm up a little again.

“So it wasn’t like one day I was suddenly attracted to you,” he continues. “It felt more like something that had been there for a long time that I refused to look at. And then I couldn’t not look anymore. It was about a year later, August I think, just after your birthday. You were on the couch watching a movie. You had your car, but you kept failing your driving test, so you just...didn’t go home. You’d been at our house for days, and you were out of clean clothes, and you refused to let me teach you how to do laundry.”

“Why would I?” Abby sends everything to the cleaners. Clarke has never done a load of laundry in her life.

“Because sometimes you have to do things for yourself. Anyway, I don’t remember where O was, but you were alone, wearing one of my undershirts and a pair of my boxers, and I was pissed you went into my room without asking, but also — I don’t know, it did something to me. Whatever wall kept me from seeing you in a certain light just...crumbled away. Seeing you in my clothes, on my couch. Knowing you had been in my room. And then, I don’t know why, logical progression, I thought about what you would look like in my clothes, on my bed. And then not in any clothes at all. I pushed the thought away as soon as I had it. I tried to rebuild the wall, but I could never get it high enough. Always barely seeing over the top of it into what could be. And then not a year later you came into my room and asked me to kiss you, and I wanted to say no, tried to say no, but — I couldn’t. You were in your little outfit, red all over. Fidgeting, nervous. It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen, and I just — there was nothing I could have done to prepare myself for that. I wanted to kiss all the fear out of you. Wanted to make you feel better than I knew any dumb teenage dudebro could. After that, I was scrambling, trying to put the wall back up, but by that point it wasn’t even rubble, just dust, and I knew I’d never feel about you like I used to. We’d never have that innocence back. Then Finn kept throwing up all these red flags you were totally blind to, and it felt like you were walking into a trap, and I couldn’t warn you about it without looking like a jealous freak —”

“Which you were.”

“Which _I guess_ I might have been. So once I’d committed to preventing you from sleeping with him, there was no denying my actual intentions anymore. And now we’re here.”

Clarke pulls her hand away, can almost feel in her own chest the drop of disappointment in his. Then she pushes herself to standing and slides the lock of the handicap stall and opens the door. She knows she has ugly cryface but she doesn’t care. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before.

He stands too. His hair is messy as if he’s run his hands through it a number of times, and his tie is loosened at the neck, crooked now.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she echoes. “Except for giving me a detention. You can be sorry for that.”

“Okay.” He offers a hopeful smile. “I’m sorry for giving you a detention.”

She takes a step closer to him. Wraps her arms around his neck and presses her face into the crook of his shoulder, clinging to him on her tiptoes. He hesitates for a moment before curling his arms around her in turn. They hold each other until Clarke feels like she might cry again, so she pulls away a little, just enough to meet his gaze, and the look he’s giving her is unlike any look he’s given her before, so she doesn’t know what it means, has nothing to compare it to.

She gets the same feeling she got right before he kissed her the first time, the boiling need at the very base of her. It’s the right moment, she thinks. She didn’t engineer it or force it. She waited for it, waited her entire life for it. He drags his knuckles gently down the side of her face, rough catch of his scrapes on her cheek, tilts her chin up with two fingers. Presses his lips to hers. His mouth is familiar to her now, slow sweetness at first, open-mouthed kisses, one after the other, followed by the soft press of his tongue. His hand rests lightly on the side of her neck. She wraps hers in his tie, drags him closer. He seems to like that; he deepens the kiss, bites her lip. Faster, rougher, hand now gripping the hair at the base of her neck. She almost can’t keep up, can’t breathe except for brief gasps. He’s never been this frantic, this demanding. All she can do is hold on.

Eventually he forces himself away, presses his forehead against hers, breathing heavily, eyes closed. His thumb traces the underside of her bandage. “I would have killed him. I wanted to.”

“I know.”

They kiss again. Slow, lazy. Too brief.

“Let’s go home,” he says.

“It’s not noon yet.”

“You’re not seriously suggesting finishing out detention.”

“Well,” she says, fidgeting a little, thighs slick. “I broke the rules. I deserve to be punished.”

“You can’t expect me to sit in an empty room for two hours and keep my hands off you. Not after this.”

“You’re missing an obvious solution to our problem.” She unwraps her hand from his tie, tightens the knot back up to his collar. “What does the student handbook say about corporal punishment?”

“Clarke, no. With what happened last night? You’re — ”

She shuts him up by cupping his erection in her palm. She’s never touched him before, and now that she’s doing it, she almost regrets it. He feels intimidating, huge in her hand, but maybe the layers of clothing make it feel bigger than it really is. His eyes shut, jaw twitches; he grips her hip tightly.

“You know how I get after I cry.” She doesn’t know what movement to make so she slides her hand up and down with a little bit of pressure, leans up to kiss his jaw, his neck. She feels powerful, opposite of last night, like she could break him if she wanted. Like he would let her.

At his ear, she says, “I want you to show me the good kind of hurt.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Several references to blood and various injuries


	8. Chapter 8

Bellamy tells Clarke to wait a minute before following him back to the classroom, just in case anyone is around. After he leaves, she splashes water on her face and adjusts her clothes. In the mirror, she can see her nipples through her shirt, and the spaces between buttons leave wide gaps, fabric stretched too tightly. It occurs to her that she’s about to mess around with her best friend’s brother while wearing said best friend’s clothes. It also occurs to her, briefly, that Octavia would be pissed. Clarke forces the thought away along with the wave of guilt that comes with it. She needs this. Needs him. Needs to undo the damage Finn caused. She pulls the hair tie from her braid and shakes her hair out. Her heart thrums as she heads back to the classroom. 

Bellamy is waiting just inside the room. He pulls her in by the arm and closes the door behind her. Locks it. A narrow window is set into the wood, but it’s covered almost completely with flyers advertising the debate club and Model UN. 

He kisses her again, a light press of his lips to hers as if the last couple minutes were too many. Frantic again. Needy. This is the Bellamy she likes best.

“There’s so much you don’t know,” he says. “I want to show you everything.”

She trails a finger lightly down the length of his bruise, feels more confident than she’s ever felt. Bellamy Blake wants her. Has wanted her for a long time. He thinks about her when she’s not around. He’s willing to kill for her.

“You can start by bending me over that table,” she says.

“How freaked out would you be if I told you I’ve imagined this scenario about a thousand times?”

“I want you to tell me every filthy thing you’ve ever thought about me.”

“Might take a while.”

“Think there’s any way we’ll get caught?” The window shades are drawn, and as far as she knows, the school is empty.

“I punched a student in the face. At this point there’s not much to lose.”

She reaches on her toes and kisses him lightly. “I like this Bellamy. Irresponsible, risk-takey Bellamy.”

“Doesn’t come around often. Get your fill while you can.”

“I’d love nothing more than to get my fill of you.”

His smile builds to something near-evil, the flick of a switch from Bellamy to Mr. Blake. She appreciates his subtle flare for theatrics. “I’m going to need you to bend over that table, Ms. Griffin.”

So she goes and stands in front of the table, presses her palms flat against it.

He taps her arm. “Elbows down.”

She complies. The table is low enough that she bends completely over, parallel to the floor. She can feel the hem of her skirt graze her cunt, and it doesn’t go much lower. 

Bellamy drags his palm up her thigh, lifts the hem of her skirt as he goes and lets out a quiet groan. “Do you go without underwear every day?”

“Not every day, but — some days, yeah.”

“You mean you sit at that desk right over there, taking notes while I lecture, not wearing underwear.”

“Yeah?”

He squeezes her ass, kneads the muscle. “Christ. Never going to be able to concentrate again.”

“Do you think about me while you teach?” she asks.

His hand slides up her spine and his fingers thread into her hair. He grips a handful at the base of her neck and pulls back until she’s looking at the chalkboard, throat exposed, forearms still pressed flat to the table. It doesn’t hurt, but it could. She exhales a shaking breath, starts gasping and panting, feels slick between her legs as she fidgets.

He leans down. The wool of his dress pants scratches the back of her thighs. “Sweetheart,” he says, “I’m always thinking about you.”

Her neck strains with the tension of his grip, jaw slack. The discomfort sends a wave of heat all the way down to her knee-highs. 

He lets go. Her head falls forward and she drags in a few deep breaths. He rests one hand on her lower back, the other just below her ass. His fingers run little circles around the slick that’s coating her inner thighs. 

“Wet for me and we haven’t even started.” He kneads her ass again, fingers dangerously close to her cunt. “Ready?”

She nods.

“Need to hear you say it, baby.”

That word again. It’ll never get old.

“I’m ready,” she says.

He takes his hand off her ass. Immediately she misses the heat of his palm. She squeezes her eyes shut, body tense. She’s never been spanked before, didn’t even know it was a thing you could enjoy until she saw it in a movie once. She holds her breath, hears the quick shift in the air as he brings his hand down, the loud crack against her flesh. She jumps a little in surprise, lets out a high-pitched squeak. Stinging, throbbing pain blossoms across her ass. 

“Oh my god,” she says, heart hammering, skin vibrating. “Do it again.”

She glances over her shoulder at him. He’s wide-eyed in concentration, something at war on his face — a bit of guilt, maybe, overridden by whatever force has pulled them completely out of their senses. 

He rubs circles over the pain, spreading it out. “Not a punishment if you enjoy it.”

“Don’t care.” She wiggles her ass. Crosses her arms on the table and rests her head on them, getting comfy. “Do it again.”

“Such a brat,” he says, but there’s no heat behind it.

“Your brat,” she mutters.

“My brat.”

He lifts his hand and brings it down on the other cheek. This time the sound is impressively loud but the sting isn’t as bad. 

“Harder,” she says, muffled in the space of her arms.

Back to the first side, a little harder. The throb of the first echoes with the sting of the third.

She lifts her head up. “My mom once made you drag an entire filing cabinet from the basement up to her office, and you did it without breaking a sweat. I know you’re stronger than that.”

He makes a little frustrated noise in his throat. She knows he can’t back down from a challenge. This time, he brings his hand down so hard that Clarke jolts forward. The table skids a few inches across the linoleum. It knocks the breath out of her. Her nails scrabble against the table and she squirms in pain. She was right — the good kind of hurt. She’s never felt anything like it. 

“Oh fuck,” she breathes. “Oh fuck. Oh my god.”

He rubs his hand over the welt he surely left, smoothing out the sting again. “You like that?”

“I can’t —” She swallows heavily. “Fuck. More, please.”

“I don’t know, Clarke.”

“Please, Mr. Blake. I promise I’ll be good from now on. I promise I’ll learn my lesson.”

It works. He lets out a long breath, drags his blunt nails up the inside of her thigh. She whimpers; everything’s so sensitive. She feels like she’s slowly being lit on fire.

“Just one more,” he says. 

The slap echoes this time. Clarke’s cry gets stopped in her throat. 

“Such a good girl for me,” he says. “Tell me what you need now, baby.”

Clarke’s eyes are wet. Her body is starting to tremble again, the way it gets when she’s too tense.  _ Good girl _ rings in her ears, bounces through her mind. She’ll never forget it, those words, this feeling she has, praise and pain and pride. Nothing happened last night; nothing will happen tomorrow. All she has is this moment, greedy pleasure, skin alight.  

“Will you — will you, you know.” She can’t seem to form the words. 

“I don’t know,” he says. “You’re going to have to tell me.”

“I want you to get me off.”

“Need to be more specific.”

“Finger me.”

“Finger your what?”

She grits her teeth. “I want you to finger my pussy.”

“There you go.” 

She feels two of his fingers graze her soaked cunt from bottom to top. Not enough to satisfy, only tease.

She writhes, muscles tensing all over, tries to make the shaking to stop.

“Relax,” he says, “I’m gonna take care of you,” and now his fingers are circling slowly over her clit. She’s almost embarrassed by how wet she is. 

She forces herself to take a deep breath, let herself uncoil a little. He pushes a finger inside and it goes in easily. Fucks it in and out at an agonizing pace. It’s good to be filled a little, but she’s eager to feel the stretch again, to feel full of him. His thumb rests against her asshole, a teasing pressure that makes her nervous — she’s never thought about trying anything like that, but the light touch, the mild threat, pushes her quickly toward coming. It doesn’t help that they can get caught any minute. The stress is unraveling her. All her strings are pulled too tight. She bites the feeling down. Deep breaths.

He slips his finger out. What follows is a desire she’s never experienced, emptiness that needs to be filled immediately. 

He touches her shoulder and tugs her up. When she tries to stand, he puts his hand in the middle of her back. “Slowly.”

So she comes slowly to standing upright. Her skirt falls back down. He unbuttons the top button of her shirt, then the second, third, kisses her neck while he works. All the way down until he gets to where her shirt is tucked into her skirt, and he pulls it open and cups her breasts in his palms, flicks his thumbs over her nipples. With every pass, she gasps and shudders, has to hold on to the edge of the table. He lifts her skirt from the front and fingers her again. 

She can feel his erection against her ass; she reaches behind her to feel it, and he moans into her neck. She does what she did before, what seemed to work: squeezes a little, a slight up and down movement, mostly curious. Wants the evidence of how much he wants her. It still seems enormous — even without the layers, there’s no way it could ever fit in her.

He takes her hand and pulls it away. Before he can chastise her for touching him without permission, she says, “But I want to.”

“I can’t get anything in return, remember?” he says in her ear. “That was your logic for making this okay.”

“You can’t turn my manipulative tactics back on me.”

“Watch me.”

The fight is over when he takes her by the hip and spins her around, pushes her against the table. It hits the back of her thighs. He guides her on top of it, so that her knees are bracketing his legs, and the plywood is digging into the welts on her ass, which hurts in the best way.

“Lean back,” he says, so she does, onto her palms, the edge of the narrow table digging into them. He lifts her legs by the knees and spreads them. Lets his eyes wander from her open shirt to her too-short skirt. He shakes his head like he can’t believe it. “You are so goddamn beautiful.”

She bites her lip. Probably full-body blushing now, and he’ll be able to see all of it, the way her chest gets red, the insides of her elbows. 

“I’ve been dying to taste you,” he says, leaning down to kiss her neck, trail down her chest. “Can I?”

“I don’t know.  _ Can  _ you?”

He lifts his head and glares at her. 

“You  _ can,”  _ she continues. “But I won’t let you.”

He looks surprised and a little offended. “Really?”

She tilts her head to the side and smiles, feels powerful again like before. For once he wants something, and she won’t give it to him. “You can’t go down on me until I’m allowed to go down on you.”

His head falls to her stomach, hands clutching her hips. His mouth is so close to her cunt; she could say yes and feel it. Feel his tongue on her, in her for the first time. But if she lets him do it now, it’s one less thing he’ll be compelled to teach her later. 

His words come out muffled: “Every inch I give, you take a mile.”

“Gonna be a long drive.”

She runs her fingers through his hair and tugs a little. He comes up willingly, slots his mouth against hers and his hand finds her again. This time he sinks two fingers inside her. The sweet pain of the stretch is familiar now, but she clenches in surprise anyway. He circles her clit with his thumb while his fingers curl up and meet the spot inside that makes her feel like she’s shattering. She doesn’t need to chase down her orgasm; it comes straight for her, against her will.

“Monday,” he says, teeth grazing her throat, lips on her pulse. “We’ll be back in this room, and only the two of us will know what happened here. I want you to think about this. Think about me bending you over this table. My fingers inside you. Making you come apart.”

She can’t speak, can only moan and pant and focus on not erupting. She’s so close — she’s never climbed this high. Every time she thinks she’s ready to tip over the edge, he changes something, a movement of his hand, the speed, the depth. She realizes he’s doing it on purpose, dragging it along. That he knows exactly what to do to make her come when and how hard he wants. 

He cups her entire pussy in his hand and this time fucks her hard and fast with his fingers. Now she’s hurtling upward, ready for the fall. The wet sounds seem to echo in the empty room, and she manages to whimper, “It’s gonna get everywhere.”

“That’s okay, baby,” he says. “Make a mess for me.”

She takes a deep breath like she’s about to jump into a pool. He hits just the right spot, quickly claps his other hand over her mouth to silence the shout that rises to her lips. She comes so hard, she can feel it pulsing out of her this time, can hear the drip and splatter on the linoleum.

He replaces the hand over her mouth with his lips, pushes his fingers in and out in time with her fluttering walls. When it finally subsides, she feels completely drained — empty now of all the grossness she came here with, the heaviness. She feels so light she thinks she might float away. 

He pulls his fingers out, rests his forehead against hers and wipes the wetness on her leg. Then he gently lowers her knees so she’s sitting upright, in a puddle of her own come, legs dangling.

“I like it when you call me that,” she says. She thinks she should be embarrassed, everything soaked like this, but she can’t bring herself to care.

“Call you what?”

“Baby.”

“Yeah?”

“I want you to call me that all the time.”

He kisses her again, all Bellamy now, boyish and earnest and with so much love she can hardly believe it’s real.

“I will,” he says. “Only when we’re alone. Trust that I’m saying it in my head the rest of the time.”

“Okay, fine, I guess.” She plays with his tie, pouts a little. “Will you buy me a cheeseburger on the way home?”

He laughs and it’s the best sound she’s ever heard. “Okay, baby, we’ll get you a cheeseburger.”

 

* * *

When she comes up the driveway on Monday morning, the hood of the truck is popped and Bellamy is bent over the engine, dipstick in hand. He’s checking the oil. In a three-piece suit. With a giant bruise on his face. A single moment has never captured him so well. 

“Morning, princess,” he says, wiping the dipstick with a rag and slotting it back into its place. He lowers the hood and slams it shut, and when he finally looks at her, he gets his concerned face on immediately. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sick. I can’t go to school.” She coughs pitifully into her fist.

He presses the back of his hand to her forehead, his palms to her cheeks. He leans in and presses his lips to her forehead too. “Hm,” he says, then lays a kiss there and steps back. It doesn’t mean anything — it’s what he’s always done when he checks her temperature. It took until she was a teenager to realize the kiss isn’t a necessary part of temperature-taking. “I think you have the plague. We should take you to a hospital.”

“I’d rather do that than face an entire school of people talking about me behind me back.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” he says. “They’ll be talking about both of us. And Fern.”

_ “Finn.” _

“It’s not so bad.” He leans back on the hood of the truck. “Remember the fight I got into with — god, what was his name.” He makes a flat gesture over his head. “I used to call him Flock of Seagulls. Anyway, sophomore year. Sent him to the hospital. No one talked about anything else for like, a month. No one but Miller would even look at me.”

She only kind of remembers it. Flock of Seagulls made disparaging remarks about Aurora’s “line of work” non-stop. Bellamy had gotten into a lot of scrapes, but this was the fight that changed his life. He was suspended, and the school made him see Mr. Kane the guidance counselor twice a week until he graduated, to help with his “anger management issues.” Being in Bellamy’s circle of protection meant she was never afraid of him, but she was afraid for anyone who pissed him off. Really, she’s surprised he showed so much restraint toward Finn, when he could have pulled a Flock of Seagulls on him, which, Clarke considers herself a good person, but if he’d done that, she wouldn’t have blamed him at all.

“So this is old hat for you,” she says.

He shrugs. “And it’s different, being a teacher. Everyone talks about you behind your back anyway.” 

“What if they fire you? You’re not nervous at all?”

“Nah.” He squeezes her arm, lets his hand trail down until he reaches her palm. His fingers slide between hers, loose grip, hidden from the door by the truck. He offers a consoling smile, but something in his expression wavers. “I’ve had worse. It’ll be okay.”

Octavia opens the door and Bellamy jerks his hand away. 

“Sorry sorry sorry,” she says, “I know, I’m late, let’s just go,” hopping toward them as she shoves her foot into a boot.

 

* * *

It’s not okay, not by a long shot. Octavia and Harper walk into school in front of Clarke. Clarke keeps her head down, but she doesn’t miss the tension in the air as she passes. The feeling of people staring at her. Bellamy had gone in the side entrance so he could duck into his classroom without much fuss, but Clarke doesn’t have that luxury. She has to walk across the entire school, pretending not to notice everyone looking at her, talking about her, thinking about her. There’s no way to tell if they’re only curious about what happened, or judging her, or empathetic. For now they’re just a silent audience, and Clarke is standing on stage without a script.

A herd of sophomore girls group up behind her, giggling, and Clarke makes the mistake of looking over her shoulder. The leader’s name is Charlotte; Clarke knows because Charlotte tried out for the cheerleading squad two years running and Octavia rejected her both times, referred to her as “a snotty little bitch, and we already have enough snotty big bitches on the squad.”

“I wish Mr. Blake would punch some dude in the face for  _ me,”  _ Charlotte says. “But I guess he only does that for girls who suck his dick.”

Octavia stops abruptly and turns around. “Go practice your shitty cartwheels, you graceless little freak.”

Charlotte looks hurt for only a second before recovering quickly, nose lifted high, then turns down a different hallway, her friends following behind.

Fucking sophomores.

 

* * *

At lunch, the first few minutes are the worst. She’s alone at the table waiting for her friends to make it through the lunch line. It feels like the cafeteria is quieter than normal and everyone is staring at her, but she refuses to look up and confirm it. All she knows is that Pike is in the corner reading a book. Bellamy must have switched his lunch back to his old time. She’s too nauseated to eat. She pulls out the sandwich she packed for herself and her grapes and carrot sticks and vitamin water. It’s so much food, she thinks. How did she used to eat all this by herself? 

While she’s staring blankly at the table willing time to pass, someone comes and sits beside her. Her heart speeds up — it’s exactly how Finn used to come sit beside her, a heavy plopping down, spread legs, too close, no warning. The faint, bitter smell of chewing tobacco.

It can’t be him, she thinks. There’s no way it’s — 

She looks up. It’s Murphy. His arms are crossed on the table and he’s looking at a far-off point across the cafeteria.

“I heard what happened,” he says. He’s the first one to breach the topic to her openly, not as a snide remark. Though, she thinks, maybe that’s coming. “Or, I guess, what people are saying happened. And if what people are saying happened is true, which — we all saw the video —”

She finally finds her voice. “What do you want, Murphy?”

He’s come here to defend Finn, she thinks. To tell her she should have let sleeping dogs lie. That everyone knew he was unstable and she should have known not to provoke him. That really, deep down, he’s actually a good guy, and she brought out the worst in him.

Murphy stares at the table and picks at a dried blob of what might be cheese, or wood glue. “I just wanted to say —” He scrapes it a little harder. “I’m sorry.”

There’s no way what she just heard came out of his mouth. There has to be a punchline.  _ I’m sorry you’re such a cunt. _ Or  _ I’m sorry he didn’t finish the job. _ “You’re what?”

He leans back, crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m sorry, okay. I knew all about Pittsburgh. I knew he got expelled from his last school. I knew about Raven. I knew he was — I knew what he could do.”

“How’d he get expelled?”

“He’s a coke dealer.”

She’s suddenly glad she didn’t start eating. She would have choked. “He’s  _ what?” _

“Why do you think he kept going back to Pittsburgh on the weekends?”

“Raven.”

“Probably a bonus. Or maybe he just refused to break up with her, I don’t know. But he’s got a supplier there, and he brings it here, where there’s demand. Small town, bored kids. It’s a booming business.”

“So he  _ does _ have money.”

"I’ll do like shrooms or whatever but I’m wired enough as-is. I stay away from that shit. So I kept thinking, like, it’s not my business. But I also don’t fuck around with cheaters, you know? Especially long-distance ones. I’d never do that to Emori and she’d never do it to me.”

“So why did you hang out with him so much?”

“Look around, Clarke. Who else have I got?”

It’s true. They’ve gone to school together since kindergarten and Murphy has never had friends, only people who tolerate his physical proximity. He’s widely disliked, but also dismissed, so far under the social radar no one even bothers talking behind his back. All she knows is that people call him the cockroach. But it seems rude to concede, so she asks, “What could you have done?”

“I don’t know, out him to you? Tip you off before you started dating him? Take out an anonymous ad in the school paper saying ‘Finn Collins Is a Violent Cheating Douchebag, Clarke Griffin Stay Away.’”

It gets a laugh out of her, the first of the whole day. Murphy seems surprised by it and smiles shyly in response, ducks his head. She’s never seen him smile before.

“It’s okay,” Clarke says. “I don’t blame you. Finn was your friend, and I wasn’t. You had no reason to break his trust just to show me red flags I willfully ignored.”

“And sorry I made that comment about Blake, too. It was out of line.”

“Apology accepted.” 

He nods, taps the table twice, says, “Cool, glad we had this talk,” and starts to get up.

“Wait,” she says. “Do you have a lunch?”

“No,” he replies, like it’s obvious. 

“Want some of mine?”

“Really?”

“I’m not very hungry.” She holds out her sandwich bag to him.

“Okay, thanks,” he says, still bewildered, and sits back down.

 

* * *

By fifth period, Clarke is totally worn down. She dreads history as much as she anticipates it. Dreads it because she knows the whole class will have tension — it’s the only place where all three players have been on stage at once. She predicts Bellamy will be nonchalant about it, totally oblivious to everyone staring at his bruise, and Clarke will be shy and quiet, and Finn will be absent. When she enters the room, she’s surprised it’s not packed with people waiting to see what will happen. The students who are already seated do look up, though, and Bellamy isn’t in the room yet. 

The room. This room, where Bellamy bent her over that table. This room, where she came harder than she ever has. This room, and no one knows what happened here.

Clarke takes her seat. She feels the tension rise and tells herself it’s in her head. The bell rings. Bellamy is the last to enter and he shuts the door behind him. On Saturday, that sound meant something so different.

She meets his gaze as he makes his way to the front. He looks amused, cocky, and she knows he’s thinking about detention, just as she’s thinking about detention, because he told her to, because he anticipated this moment. It’s only a brief glance, but it’s enough to make her body pulse hot. She’s so keyed-up she feels like she might hyperventilate: stress of being the target of the rumor mill, sweet secrecy of an affair with the teacher. She's never felt so separate from her peers.

“Okay,” Bellamy says. He pulls his phone out of his pocket. “I’m setting a timer for two minutes. Ask me whatever you want, and when time’s up, we’re dropping it.” He hits a button. “Go.”

Clarke stares at him in terror. He gives her a look that says,  _ Trust me. _

Fucking Blake family honesty.

A kid in the back’s hand shoots up. Bellamy nods at him. 

“What happened to your face?” the kid asks.

“Got punched.” Bellamy points to the next hand.

“Did you really punch Finn Collins?”

“Yep. Next.” 

Clarke glances around. About a dozen hands are up.

“Are you going to get fired?” the girl beside Clarke asks.

“Your guess is as good as mine. Next.”

“What’s your relationship with Clarke?”

Clarke doesn’t even have time to react to that one. Bellamy doesn’t hesitate: “She’s my sister’s best friend. Old news. Next.”

“Why did you punch Finn?”

“He had it coming. Next.”

“Will you punch any of us?”

“Not planning on it, but not out of the question. Next.”

“Will Finn be coming back?”

“Not if I have any say in it. Twenty seconds left.” He points to someone in the front row.

“If you could do it again, would you?”

“In a heartbeat. Alright, last question.” 

“Did it hurt?”

“Not when you’ve been punched as much as I have.” The alarm goes off. Bellamy silences it. “Okay, that’s it. No whispering. No speculating. No gossiping. No passing notes. Immediate detention if I see or hear anything about it. Tell your friends, and have them tell their friends. It’s over, and we’re moving on. Now open your books to chapter eight.”

Clarke can’t believe it. It worked. The tension that had been in the room has completely lifted. While everyone gets their books out, Clarke glances at Bellamy, grateful, and he offers a quick, arrogant smile before turning to the board, chalk in hand.

 

* * *

That evening, when Clarke tells her mom, “My boyfriend tried to kill me on Friday,” Abby only frowns and says, “You have a boyfriend?”

So Clarke goes through the saga of Finn from the beginning, leaving out the fooling-around-with-my-history-teacher bits. “The police need us to tell them if we’re pressing charges. They advised me to speak with a lawyer.”

They’re at the kitchen table together for the first time in months, plastic tub of once-frozen lasagna between them and a plate of garlic bread beside it. It would be nice except Clarke had to call Jackson and ask him to put an appointment on Abby’s calendar for the occasion.

“That seems like a little much, don’t you think?” Abby asks.

Clarke unwinds the scarf from her neck and peels off the bandage. 

Abby puts her glasses on and tilts Clarke’s chin toward the light. “That doesn’t look so bad.”

So Clarke pulls up her photo reel and shows Abby a picture of Bellamy’s bruise.

Abby inspects it. Zooms in. Zooms out. Hands the phone back. Takes off her glasses. Finally,  _ finally _ she says, “Are you okay?”

“No, Mom. I’m not okay.”

Clarke could have said anything, and Abby’s response would have been the same: “I’ll call our lawyer tomorrow and see what she thinks.” She cuts a square of lasagna and carries it to an empty plate, sets it in front of Clarke even though she still has no appetite. Abby does the same for herself.

Clarke can’t do this anymore. Any other time in her life, she’d let it slide. Assume her mother knows best and go along with it. But she’s sick of feeling powerless. Sick of being silent. 

“No,” she says. “Nothing about this situation is okay. It’s not okay Bellamy has to come to my rescue over everything. That you spend entire weekends with your phone off and I don’t know where you are. That I dated a guy — my first boyfriend — for  _ months, _ and you had no idea. I put a hotel room on your credit card, Mom. I was about to lose my virginity to a basketcase in a four-star hotel on the other side of town, and you were going to foot the bill, and you had no idea.”

“I gave you that credit card because I trust you. If you’re going to exploit —”

“It’s not trust, Mom. It’s apathy. You haven’t cared about a single thing that’s happened to me since Dad died.”

_ “Clarke.” _

“You dumped me on the Blakes’ doorstep when I was four and never looked back. I’m just another bill you have to pay.”

Abby sets her fork down. Her spine is rigid, face placid and voice even like she’s speaking to a patient. “You’ve been through a lot this weekend. Tomorrow, we’ll —”

“Yell at me!” Clarke shouts. “Be angry with me! Be sad for me! Be anything other than nothing! Your daughter almost  _ died,  _ and you’re checking out. Sweeping it under the rug. You haven’t even tried to comfort me. You don’t even know how.”

Not a flash of anger in response, not surprise. Nothing. “You have never wanted for anything in your life, Clarke. You have good friends, a good social life. You do well in school. You have a car. Next year you’ll go to college anywhere you want and continue having all of those things. You will live debt-free without having to work a day for it. It seems like you’re doing pretty well to me.”

Clarke refuses to cry in front of her mother, who is still as calm as if Clarke had sat down to ask about taxes. 

So instead, she gets up from the table and grabs her keys from the counter, her coat from the back of the couch, and slams the door on her way out.

And she goes home.

 

* * *

The week before Thanksgiving passes in a blur. Finn gets officially expelled and the lawyer recommends settling — a hundred hours of community service. Finn’s lawyer accepts, and Clarke doesn’t know what happens to him after that. Maybe he’ll head back to Pittsburgh. Either way, he’s out of Clarke’s life for good.

Bellamy has a meeting with Principal Jaha and Superintendent Wallace after school one day. Clarke and Octavia wait for him on the couch, watching out the window for his truck like they used to when they were younger and he’d come home from the auto shop with dinner in hand. 

The nights are coming early now, nearly dark at five when Bellamy pulls into the garage. He comes in, tosses his suit jacket on the table, keys, endless stack of grading. He looks tired, shoulders slumped.

“What’d they say?” Octavia asks.

Clarke can tell he’s forcing down a smile. “Less than a slap on the wrist.” He falls onto the couch and yanks at his tie. “More like a commendation. Jaha wasn’t happy about it, PR reasons or whatever, but Wallace — dude is old-school. Said the district could use more teachers ‘willing to meet violence with violence." I don’t really want to think about what that means. Apparently Jaha had been keeping an eye on him since the beginning of the year. They didn’t want him to go here at all, but they couldn’t turn him away, either. So they were waiting for him to fuck up.”

“No way,” Clarke says. “That’s it?”

“They saw the video. Self-defense.”

“Conservatives are wild,” Octavia says. “So eager for teachers to beat up students.”

“Wallace’s exact words were, ‘Sometimes a good punch to the face is the quickest way to build character.’”

That’s it, Clarke thinks. It’s all finally, blessedly over.

 

* * *

For Thanksgiving, Clarke invites Abby over to the Blakes’, and, surprising everyone, she agrees to come. Octavia invites Jasper. Bellamy, Octavia, and Clarke split cooking duties, using the tiny kitchen to do an intricate and chaotic dance all afternoon. It’s what they do every year, and somehow, they’ve never actually gotten any better at cooking. Jasper watches from the doorway and makes snarky comments at Octavia’s expense. She always laughs, even when they aren’t funny. Aurora, too tired to help out, sits with Abby in the living room and they get caught up. They down an entire bottle of wine before dinner has even begun.

There is a moment, though. Octavia is showing Jasper something in her room. Abby and Aurora are laughing together on the couch. No one is around. Bellamy is carving the turkey, and he holds out a little piece for Clarke to try. 

“Probably terrible,” he says.

Instead of taking it from him, she opens her mouth, and he feeds it to her, but she sucks his thumb in, circles her tongue around the pad of it.

“Clarke,” he says as if to reprimand her, at odds with the fondness in his eyes, and slips his thumb out before they can get caught. 

“That’s not my name.”

“Baby,” he whispers, smiling.

“Better.” And now she’s gotten close to him, too close, her palm on his chest, and she can tell he’s trying not to touch her, put a hand on her waist or tuck her hair behind her ear, things he does when no one is watching — but someone is always watching. They’re never alone. She wants so badly to kiss him, lift up on her toes and brush her lips against his.  

Then she hears Octavia say, “You’ve never seen  _ Christmas Vacation?  _ That’s like, a crime.”

And Clarke takes a wide step back toward the yams, and Bellamy returns to carving, but it’s too late. Her eyes briefly meet Octavia’s, and in that time she sees a question flicker over her face —  _ What was that? _ And Clarke forces her own expression into her mother’s trained complacency —  _ Nothing, it’s nothing  _ — hiding the sudden onslaught of guilt and fear and worry. 

It lasts only a second, so quick that Clarke wonders if she imagined it, if maybe she’s just being paranoid. They had only been standing near each other, she tells herself. Nothing weird about that. Unless their faces gave it away, the open and mutual adoration. Then Jasper says, “You’re the one who hasn’t seen  _ Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,”  _ and the moment passes.

The turkey turns out solidly okay, if a little dry. The cranberry sauce is from a can. The yams are burnt. The pumpkin pie is still kind of frozen, and instead of eating it they take turns shooting whipped cream into their mouths for dessert. The house is so overheated they have to open a window and let in the November chill. The only thing that’s any good is the green bean casserole, which Bellamy made, and he’s really smug about it. Octavia points out that it only has three ingredients.

There are a lot of things Clarke still doesn’t know — where she’s going to be next year, if her mom actually loves her, how long Aurora’s health will hold out, where Finn is, if Raven Reyes is still with him. If Octavia will ever accept Clarke’s feelings for Bellamy, and if Bellamy will ever be able to fully reveal those feelings in turn. If those feelings are even real, or a product of circumstance, this brief, pivotal intersection of their lives before everything will inevitably change.

But for the first time in months, she’s not worried about any of it. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say that with the publishing of this chapter, I have officially posted one million words of fic AO3! (It took four damn years, but still.)

Every year, Clarke, Bellamy, and Octavia decorate on the first Saturday of December. It’s always a big to-do, setting up the old plastic tree, some of the branches now broken or bare, covering it in tinsel and lights and ornaments, putting up the stockings, watching Bellamy string lights on the house and doing absolutely nothing to help him under the guise of “spotting the ladder.” Even with the three of them, it takes hours. First Bellamy gets out the tree and untangles the lights while Octavia and Clarke make a batch of cookie dough. Then, while the dough is chilling, they start putting on ornaments. And after that, the three of them cut out dough in little shapes and cover them in sprinkles, and while the cookies are baking, they put more ornaments on the tree, and other little finishing touches all over the little bungalow, and take turns rotating the cookie pans out of the oven. Sometimes Octavia and Clarke even sing carols, and Bellamy, who won’t sing, corrects them when they get the lyrics wrong.

Aurora never participates in decorating, because, Octavia says, she hates Christmas. She pretended to like it only long enough for Bellamy and Octavia (and Clarke) to set up their own traditions, and dropped out of the picture. Abby is the same way. Clarke was three the last time Abby decorated for Christmas.

Today has been perfect, really. Exactly what Clarke needed after the chaos of November. Clarke and Octavia are standing outside huddled in their coats, late afternoon already growing dark, watching Bellamy climb down the ladder. On the gutters hangs a lovely string of icicle lights. They admire them for only a moment before Octavia’s text alert goes off and she checks it and says, “Shit, I gotta head out.”

“Where are you going?” Clarke asks.

“Town square. For the tree-lighting ceremony.”

“With Jasper?” Bellamy asks.

“Yep.”

Normally, though it’s a less important part of their annual tradition, they order Chinese food even though they’re full on cookies, and watch _Nightmare Before Christmas._

“What about dinner?” Clarke says.

“You guys go ahead. Save me some lo mein.” Octavia leans up to kiss Bellamy on the cheek. “Don’t worry, I’ll be home by curfew. Love you both,” she adds, then she gets into her car and drives off.

Aurora has been in her room all day, as she is most days when she’s not working. No one has mentioned to Clarke if her newfound absence is indicative of her deteriorating health, or depression, or both, but it’s another way that Clarke is left out of the Blake family honesty circle — she never knows what’s up with their mom, and she feels like she’s not allowed to ask.

So Clarke orders the food and Bellamy leaves to pick it up. She tries to convince herself it’ll feel normal, being alone with him tonight, but it won’t. Nothing really feels normal anymore, even their annual traditions. She can’t help but worry this is the last one, the last tree-decorating, cookie-baking, ladder-holding afternoon she’ll ever have with the Blakes. It paints a surreal glow over the day, imbues each little thing with meaning, like she’s in front of an invisible camera, performing for her future memories.

She feels trapped between states of dread and anticipation — dread of impending change, anticipation of how it might all unfold, as if time is moving forward but tripping over itself. She simultaneously misses what their little family used to be and is excited to see where her relationship with Bellamy will go next. She fears Octavia’s reaction when she finds out they’ve done more than just kiss, but she’s eager for it, too, for the secrecy to end, thinks it might be a way to shoehorn herself into the Blake family on a more official level. But it might not matter anyway. In six months, her life may look completely different: Octavia and Clarke might not stay in Arcadia; Bellamy might get a full-time teaching gig; Aurora’s health may get worse.

Bellamy gets home and Clarke takes the bag from him while he hangs up his coat. She sets it all out on the counter and asks, “Should we wake up Aurora?”

“No, let her rest. We’ll have plenty left over.”

She returns to the couch with a carton of chicken and vegetables and a fork (because she’s never learned how to use chopsticks), and presses play on the DVD. Bellamy eats his General Tso’s leaning over the coffee table. She actually only likes the first act of the movie, usually gets bored once Jack Skellington gets to Christmas Town. By that point, Octavia usually gets bored too and they break out a game to play.

Clarke waits for him to take the lead, say or do something to shatter the glass of their usual familiarity and dive into their other world together. For some reason he’s acting like he does when Octavia is around. Maybe it’s because Aurora could wake up and come out at any moment. Maybe, it occurs to her wildly, she made it all up, misinterpreted the entire thing. His admission of having feelings for her, being attracted to her. The moment at Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s all in her head.

She can’t seem to focus on the movie, keeps watching him instead. If he won’t shatter the glass, she will.

After a few minutes — Jack is singing his lamentations of the Halloween routine — Bellamy says, “Spit it out.”

“What?”

“I can feel you scheming.”

“I do not _scheme.”_

“Uh-huh.”

She waits a long moment, watches Bellamy from the corner of her eye, and when he has a piece of chicken poised in his chopsticks, she says, “Will you to teach me how to give a blowjob?”

The chicken falls back in the container.

“Goddammit, Clarke.”

“What? It’s a perfectly reasonable request. Octavia’s not here, your mom’s in bed, it’s the weekend, and I want to suck your dick. There’s no reason not to.”

“There are about a thousand reasons not to.”

“And I’m pretty sure all of them went out the window when you bent me over a table in your classroom last month.”

“That was different.”

“If by different you mean ethically bankrupt, it sure was. By comparison, a little holiday oral is nothing.”

He puts the chopsticks down, leans back and glares at her. “I swear to god, Clarke. One day you’re going to convince me to commit cold-blooded murder, and I’ll be on the stand saying, ‘It made sense when she explained it.’”

“I assume if there’s anyone I want dead that badly, it’s because they deserve it.”

“Normal people don’t think things like that.”

“I’m not normal people.” She waits for him to say something. When he doesn't, she asks again, “So are you going to put your cock in my mouth or not?”

He rubs a hand over his face, exhales slowly. She knows she’s won. “You’re not going to give up until I give in.”

“I’d give up if I thought you didn’t secretly _want_ to give in. You just need me to wear you down so you can pretend you have the moral high ground.”

“I can’t stand you.”

“You love me.”

He looks at her from the corner of his eye and gestures her forward with a jerk of his head. “Come here.”

So she crawls over to him and hooks a leg over both of his. He trails his hands from her thighs to her waist, his eyes slowly up her body, with her favorite I-could-eat-you-alive look.

“I think you like it when I manipulate you,” she says.

“It drives me fucking crazy.”

“Doesn’t mean you don’t like it.”

“I’m doing this so you don’t bite some poor frat boy’s dick off next year.”

“You’re truly a beacon of altruism,” she says, but she can’t say anything else, because he pulls her down by the back of the neck and kisses her.

She can’t believe it’s been weeks since she’s had this. Kissing him feels like breathing. He’s rough with her, all teeth, one hand gripping the hair at the nape of her neck, the other up the back of her shirt. She can feel him get hard underneath her, and she rocks against him, seam of her jeans digging in.

When he lets her go, his breath is ragged. All Mr. Blake now. “You really wanna suck my cock, baby?”

“Yes please, sir,” she says sweetly. It rips a quiet groan from his throat and he presses his mouth to the juncture of her neck and shoulder, bites down hard enough to make her gasp.

“Hold on,” he says against her skin.

She wraps her arms around his neck just in time for him to stand up in a single smooth movement, one arm under her ass and the other at her back. Her thighs grip his hips. He continues mouthing at her neck as he walks her down the hallway, movie and dinner abandoned.

In his bedroom, he drops her unceremoniously on the bed and closes the door. He climbs on top of her, kisses her so hard and fast she has trouble breathing. He grinds his hips into her and she can tell she’s already soaked. It’s just something about him, she thinks. He only has to look at her the wrong way and she turns into a fucking slip ‘n slide.

“Here’s how this is gonna go,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “I’m gonna let you suck me off. And then — and don’t you dare fucking argue with me on this — I’m gonna eat you out. Understood?”

She nods.

“Say, ‘I understand, Mr. Blake.’”

“I understand, Mr. Blake,” she tries to say without attitude, but fails.

He only laughs — in a dirty, evil-sounding way — and leans down to kiss the hollow of her throat.

“Permission to request something?” she asks.

“Granted.”

“I want to see you naked.”

He lifts his head and gives her a confused look. “Really?”

“You’re always fully clothed, and I’m not. This time I want to be dressed and I want you to be naked.” She looks up and to the left because his gaze is pretty hard to avoid and suddenly she’s nervous. “And I want to undress you.”

The look he’s giving her in response is one she wants to keep forever. He’s smiling, somewhere around surprised and excited, finds the request terribly endearing, like watching a toddler eat a lemon for the first time.

“I can honestly say no girl has ever asked or probably even wanted to look at me naked. It’s usually just a side effect of circumstance.”

“Well they’re blind, and probably dumb, and not me, so there’s no reason for us to be talking about them.”

“You sound jealous.”

“Not jealous.”

“Now you’re pouting.”

“I’m just saying, I recognize all the women you’ve been with have probably been very good and adept and experienced, and I’m not, so.”

He presses another kiss to her lips, strokes his thumb over her cheek. “I’d rather have one partner who wants to learn than ten who think they’ve got it figured out.”

It makes her feel a little better, at least. He climbs off the bed so he’s standing by the edge of it. She sits up, takes the hem of his shirt and lifts. His arms come up with her and she pulls it off, tosses it on the floor intentionally because she knows it probably bothers him. His room has always been spotless.

Easy. Normal. She’s seen him shirtless more times than not. She’s just never, you know, been the person to take the shirt off, and for some reason that makes her look at him differently, his chest hair and the dark trail that leads downward. She’s never really let herself _look_ before, at least, not the way she’s looking now. He combs his fingers through her hair. She likes that he can’t seem to stop touching her, even when she’s supposedly taking the lead.

She reaches for his belt and unbuckles it, then pauses at the waistband of his jeans, looks up at him, keeps looking at him as she unbuttons his fly, pulls the zipper down. She thinks maybe she’s trying too hard to be sexy. Or maybe she’s not being sexy enough. He helps her lower his jeans and step out of them — they’re heavy because he keeps so much shit in his pockets all the time, wallet, keys, change, chapstick, a comb like some seventies greaser — and they fall to the ground with a muffled clatter. He’s not wearing shoes or socks because he’s never wearing shoes or socks, and he kicks his jeans aside, over by his shirt.

Now he’s left in his boxers, green and blue plaid, regular cotton. He reaches into them and adjusts his dick so that it’s held up by the waistband, right at her eye level. She can’t seem to look at it, keeps her hands on his hips, not sure what to do next. Boxers off, maybe, or should she wait?

“How do you want me?” he asks. Suddenly, standing over her like this, he seems enormous.

“That’s a loaded question.” Just minutes ago she was all bravado, and now, with his cock in front of her face, she’s withering. This is real now. It’s a real thing that’s happening. “How — how do most girls do it?”

“Any which way,” he says, like he _knows,_ like he’s been given blowjobs from every angle and every position. “But I think you’d prefer me lying down.”

“Okay,” she says, and scoots aside for him.

He climbs onto the bed, lies on his back with his arm under his head so he can see her. She crawls between his legs, perches on her knees and crossed heels. She freezes again, afraid to touch him, afraid to try something dumb or that doesn’t feel good. She could have at least taken the time to google how to give a blowjob before proposing the idea.

“Take your time,” he says. “Do whatever you want.”

“And you’ll tell me what I’m doing wrong?”

“I can.”

“And right?”

“I think you’ll know.”

She decides she’s ready for the boxers to go, so she tugs them down and he lifts his hips and she slides them off. The only light is a desk lamp across the room, soft yellow that barely makes it all the way to the bed.

And then she looks at it. She’s never seen a penis in real life before. It’s softened a bit, resting crookedly against him like a wilted flower, slightly darker than the rest of his skin and surrounded by black curly hair. It’s not ugly or gross or scary at all. Just a part of his body like any other part of his body.

But she doesn’t want to touch it yet, torn between the drive to hurry this along or savor it, like eating a really good dessert. She places her hand on his thigh, soft skin under sparse, wiry hair. Runs it up to his hip, stops at a mole to the left of his belly button, leans down and kisses it. His stomach is softer than it looks, a healthy plane of fat over muscle. If he flexed she would be able to see the crevices of his ab muscles, but he’s not so it’s just normal. Just Bellamy. Not some sex-god model in a magazine. Not Mr. Blake the to-die-for hot substitute teacher. She wonders how her body will have changed by the time she’s his age, what parts of her will warp and widen, if she can love those aging parts of her the way she loves her body now, the way that she loves his.

She can look at, touch, or kiss any part of him. His body is her sandbox. Her hair falls over her shoulders and skates over his skin. She reaches back and pulls it around her shoulder.

“What are you feeling?” she asks.

“Weird,” he says, still amused.

“Bad weird?”

“No, it’s — no one’s ever wanted to just...see me.”

“So this is a first for you too.”

“Guess so.”

She runs her palms up his stomach and drags her nails lightly down his sides. He shifts and tenses like he’s ticklish and trying not to show it, and she can’t believe she didn’t know that about him. She kisses his jaw, nibbles at his chin, sucks his earlobe between her teeth, presses kisses down his throat, one specifically on his adam’s apple because she’s always wanted to. She feels the roughness of his stubble against her lips, and, feeling daring, moves down to lick one of his nipples, the way he does to her that she likes so well.

He takes in a sharp breath, not quite a gasp, so she bites a little, not hard, and is rewarded with an actual gasp, an almost-moan. And then, because she can, she breathes in the scent of him, the smell she can’t fully parse out but the one she associates most closely with comfort, safety. Home.

She continues downward, back to her starting point, the mole on his stomach, which she kisses again, and one below it, and one below that, until his cock is under her lips, and she kisses that too, just at the head, feeling it jerk slightly; one below that, on the shaft, and keeps going, the juncture of his leg and hip, his thigh, down to his shin, stopping at the top of his foot. Then she comes back around the other side, and, bolstered at having mapped his body with her mouth, runs her index finger lightly from the bottom of his cock to the tip.

When she checks his expression — open, relaxed, watching her play with him — she takes his cock in hand, strokes it a little, looks on in fascination as it quickly hardens in her grip. She’s barely moving, just shifting her fist up and down in a shallow motion. A drop of something wet comes out the little slit at the top, and she swipes it off with her thumb.

“Are you circumcised?” she asks, not knowing the difference.

“Mhm,” he says, but there’s a slight strain to his voice that wasn’t there before.

“Is that a good thing?”

“Neutral thing.”

“Am I doing it right?”

“Looser grip. Here.”

She lets go and he takes over, most of the pressure falling between his thumb and forefinger, pulling the skin over the head. It hardens visibly, goes from a dusky brown to a reddish, swollen color.

“Is that how you do it to yourself?”

His lip is bitten between his teeth. He nods.

“Do you ever think of me when you do it?”

“Fuck,” he says, even more strained now.

“You can tell me.”

“Yes.” He swallows heavily. “Almost exclusively.”

“For how long?”

“Can’t answer that without sounding like a creep.”

“Is it when you got back from college?”

He nods.

“So what, you liked to fantasize about —”

“This,” he says. “Pretty much exactly this.”

“I think about you too,” she admits. “I can’t imagine thinking about anything else.”

“Fuck,” he says again, eyes squeezed shut like he can’t bear the thought, and she decides she wants to try again, because she’s pretty sure she gets how it works now. So she takes it back, jerking him slowly the way she saw him do to himself, shocked at how hard it feels, but how soft the skin still is. Unlike anything she’s ever felt. More wetness is coming out the tip, so now the skin slides easily in her grasp. In proportion to the rest of him, his size seems reasonable, but in her hand it feels huge; she can only barely touch her middle finger to her thumb around the widest part. It’s perfectly straight, which she finds attractive in a weird way.

“I had my first sex dream about you when I was fourteen,” she says. “It was just me on your lap, rubbing against your thigh, and you were whispering nice things to me. Encouraging me. I remember I felt really loved and wanted, but I woke up freaked out. Then it kept happening. Almost the same thing every time — I’d get worked up somehow and come find you and ask you what was wrong with me, and you’d tell me I was fine, I just needed help. Then you’d touch me. Tell me how good I was. I’ve had hundreds of those dreams now, more than any other recurring dream. Even before all this, my body knew it wanted you.”

“You can’t tell me shit like that and still expect me to lie here.”

“What would you rather be doing?”

“I want to bury my face in your cunt, for one.”

“Does it bother you that much? Receiving?”

“No,” he says, though she’s unconvinced. “But my preference is obviously on the giving side.”

“Well you’ll have to wait until I’m done learning how to make you come.”

He groans in frustration, like he’s _so_ inconvenienced.

“Is there any reason I’d have to give a handjob in real life?”

“You’ll hopefully never be in a situation where you _have_ to do anything.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Handjobs are definitely a high-school thing. Graduate high school, graduate handjobs.”

“So blowjobs are better.”

“Unequivocally yes.” Honestly she’s surprised he can drop a word like ‘unequivocally’ in his current state. She’s never seen him blush before but there’s a slight tinge high on his cheeks. He has a blanket twisted in one of his fists. At first she thought his reaction was because it felt good to have her hand on him, but now she thinks it’s because he wants so badly to take the lead again. Eat her out, like he said. She likes everything about this — that he wants her so much he has to physically restrain himself, and she knows despite this he’ll still wait his turn.

She leans down, has to sweep her hair over her shoulder again, starts by licking the head, tasting the wetness there. It doesn’t taste like anything really, just skin, salt, so she licks a stripe up the length of him. His only reaction is a twitch in his thigh.

“Does that feel good?” she asks.

“Mhm,” he says, like he can’t even form words now.

If he’s too big for her hand, he’s probably too big for her mouth, but she slides it in, the tip of it anyway, and starts moving downward.

“Teeth, teeth,” he says. “Watch the teeth.”

She pulls off. “How?”

“Gotta wrap your lips around them.”

“Do you expect me to unhinge my jaw? I can barely fit it in my mouth as it is.”

“Might seem like a bad thing now, sweetheart, but trust me, it’ll be a good thing later.”

She huffs and curls her lips over her teeth and tries again. It’s a manageable fit, but barely. She tries to mimic what her hand had been doing — a steady up-and-down movement, though she can’t go down very far, her hand holding him at the base.

He runs his fingers through her hair, hand resting lightly at the back of her head.

She tries to go all the way down and her throat closes. She chokes, pops off coughing. “How do I stop my gag reflex?”

“Practice,” he says. “Go slow, get comfortable with it, bite it back.”

The swiftness of his reply makes it sound like he’s managed to bite back his own gag reflex before, which implies he’s given a blowjob. She’s never seen him as anything but glaringly heterosexual, and the thought of him with other men sparks an unbearable amount of curiosity in her.

So she tries it again, fails more quickly this time, barely making it halfway down before gagging. Tries a third time and manages to let it hit the back of her throat for a solid beat before pulling off, but she doesn’t technically gag.

“Use your hand and your mouth at the same time,” he says. “Find a rhythm that works without pushing yourself too far. I’ll do the rest.”

This time she puts it all together: lips around teeth, not choking herself, stroking him with her hand in time with the movements of her head. She breathes through her nose. It works. It’s working. She’s getting absolutely nothing out of it herself, but it’s happening.

“Fuck, baby,” he says, “you learn so quick.”

And _now_ she’s getting something out of it: a trickle of pride running down her back, the unparalleled thrill of making him feel good. She goes a little faster because she thinks she’s got the hang of it. It’s the right decision — she can feel his body tense underneath her, his breath speed up.

“Good girl, just like that, fuck.”

She wants to see him, has to lift off completely anyway to catch her breath. A trail of saliva follows her lips, and she keeps her hand moving over his cock. His mouth is open, wrinkle between his eyebrows she’s always associated with concern but now something else — staving off climax, maybe. But she _wants_ him to come, wants to make him unravel like he’s done for her.

She returns her mouth to him and continues what she was doing before, but this time adds a little twist to her grip, which makes him go, “Christ, that’s it, god your mouth feels so fucking good.”

She keeps it up for a few minutes, trying a few things but mostly sticking to what seems like the basics, until his breath grows more rapid and he says, “I’m gonna come.”

His cock gets harder and bigger, and since it’s already in her mouth, her jaw stretches with it, almost painfully, but she can feel his entire body stiffen, his breath go still on an inhale, and then she feels it — a ripple up the length of him, a pulse at the back of her tongue, then another, smaller one, and a third. His fist grips her hair and holds her head in place, so she freezes, feels still another surge. Some of it slides down her tongue, the rest down her throat. Tastes weirdly like soap, or the smell of cornstarch. Some of it floods out onto her fist. The rest she swallows, unthinkingly. Salty and bitter aftertaste.

He starts to go soft in her mouth and fist, starts to twitch and gasp, and chokes out an “Okay, okay.”

She lets go of him, unsure what to do with her wet hand, so she wipes her mouth with her dry one. He reaches over to his nightstand and pulls out a tissue and hands it to her, uses one on himself too.

“You didn’t have to swallow,” he says.

“Were there other options?”

“Spit, or pull off before it happens.”

“Spit? Like —”

“In a sink.”

“So you expect me to keep that stuff in my mouth, go all the way across the hall into the bathroom, and spit it out.”

“That’s what a lot of people do, yeah.”

“Why? Is it bad for you to swallow?”

“Some people think it’s gross is all.”

“I didn’t think it was gross. I mean it wasn’t icing or anything but it wasn’t terrible either.”

“Good to know,” he says, a little distracted as he takes the tissue out of her hand and throws it in the trash can.

“And like, pull off? Just let it get all over you? That doesn’t seem —”

“My turn,” he says, and before she can even register what’s happening, he has an arm around her waist and flips her on her back. She yelps in surprise, and then again when he yanks open the button of her jeans, lifts her bodily up, and pulls them down. He tugs them off at the hem and throws them on the floor with the rest of the clothes. She’s left in her underwear and knee-highs (they’re the warmest socks she owns and it’s _cold_ outside, okay), and he doesn’t bother with her shirt or bra, just sinks down between her legs and kisses her over the crotch of her underwear.

“You have no fucking idea how long I’ve been wanting to do this,” he says, mouthing kisses over cotton. He runs his nose up and down her slit, then squeezes her thighs and says, “Okay, baby, listen to me a sec.”

She lifts up on her elbows and looks down at him.

“If I do anything you don’t like, you have to tell me. If anything hurts, or doesn’t feel good, or just isn’t working for you, tell me to stop. I won’t take it personally, won’t get mad or upset or frustrated.”

“Okay.”

“And you can’t scream this time. Bite down on something if you have to.”

“Okay.”

“And take your time. I mean, not, like, forever, but don’t force anything, either.”

“Okay.” She doesn’t think that’ll be a problem.

It seems like it pains him to ask, “Do you have any questions before I get started?”

“Do I have to tell you when I’m about to come? Like you told me?”

He offers a small smile. “No, I’ll know.”

“Is it okay that I don’t shave? Does it make it worse?” She trimmed a little, but she doesn’t like the idea of a razor so close to her junk, and anyway, she doesn’t find pubic hair unattractive, on herself or anyone else.

“It’s fine. If anyone ever tells you you have to shave or wax, dump them.”

“So it’s not gross.”

He grabs the sides of her panties and pulls down. This time she lifts her hips to help, kicks them off when they get to her ankle.

“Trust me,” he says, settling back down and thumbing her open slightly, looking at her with such scrutiny she wants to crawl away. “You have the cutest pussy I’ve ever seen.”

“Really?”

He strokes a thumb gently over her slit. “Really.”

“What if — what if you don’t like it?”

He looks like he’s trying not to laugh. “Not possible.”

“What if I don’t like it?”

His smile widens, darkens. “Not possible either.”

“Okay,” she says, “that’s all my questions.”

He kisses her thigh, bites it playfully, then he looks at her pussy again like the sun is shining out of it. “Can’t believe I get to be the first to put my mouth on you.”

He lowers his head again, presses a hard kiss to her clit, and then licks a stripe from bottom to top. It’s a jarring feeling at first, neither good or bad, just different. Mostly she’s nervous about having his face so close to a part of her she can’t even see, except the few times she’s taken a mirror to herself, and even then, it’s not like she could ever be as close to it as he is.

“Relax,” he says.

“I’m just worried it won’t be any fun for you.”

“I promise, this is the most fun I’m capable of having. Did you have fun sucking my cock?”

“Yes.”

“So it stands to reason I’d have just as much fun eating you out. Probably more. Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Are you ready?”

“I’m ready.” This time when he puts his mouth to her, he sucks her clit, and it feels like he flipped a switch. Now her body is on, buzzing, and when he dips his tongue inside of her, her hands go immediately to his hair.

He tries all sorts of things — tongue-fucking her while rubbing her clit with his thumb, nibbling her clit, circling it, sucking it. He’s probably figuring out what she reacts best to, but she reacts to all of it, panting, whimpering and biting her lip because she can’t make any noise, occasionally bringing a hand up to her mouth to silence herself. She wishes she could talk dirty like him, have a name to call him the way he calls her baby, encourage him by something other than tugging at his hair and muffling groans into her palm.

He pulls off and she looks down. He sucks his middle finger into his mouth, then back out, and slides it into her. Goes back to laving at her clit. She starts to feel herself trip over the beginnings of an orgasm, and it’s not until he slides in a second finger that she knows it’s going to arrive more quickly than she wants it. He crooks his fingers up, and she’s done for.

She tries to think about AP Calc, the area under a curve, her seventy-year-old teacher Mrs. Giovanni and her gaudy beaded bracelets that clang together. The way she squeals chalk over the board and the whole class winces but she pretends not to notice.

Clarke’s stomach muscles tense, her fist tightens in Bellamy’s hair. She can already feel her walls start to flutter around his fingers —

And then he pulls them out, and she barely catches herself from letting out a despairing cry. He slides his hands up the back of her thighs until they reach her knees and he folds them over her chest, spreads her wide, licks her up and down slowly until the tension starts to unwind.

“Why did you stop?” she asks. “I was so close.”

He looks up at her; his mouth is wet. “You’ll come when I want you to.”

Then he goes back to what he was doing, the slow glide of his tongue, gentle pressure of his lips. It was a test-run, she thinks. He was figuring out what works for her and exactly how long it takes. He was probably counting, even. And now, he knows. He knows exactly what to do, how much of it, and when to pull back.

And that’s exactly what he does. Over and over again, brings her to the brink and back down. She loses track of time, the ability to control her body or thoughts — what little is left of her self-control is fixated on keeping quiet, on not waking up Aurora.

“Please, please, please,” she whispers. “Bellamy, please.”

It’s how she was months ago, when they first started this, her trembling body under his hands. But back then, she had no idea how to release the tension and ache inside of her, and now, that tension and ache is at his whim, to release when he allows it.

This time when she climbs up, he presses a hand down on her pelvis, meeting his fingers inside of her, and it’s such a shocking sensation that it’s nearly painful, pressurized like the feeling of your ears needing to pop. His fingers drag against the spot inside her, his tongue a constant force on her clit. She grabs a pillow and presses it to her face. As the first wave crests over her, it hauls her hips off the bed, and with the second comes the rush of a now-familiar feeling, soaking his chin, his hand, the sheets. After that, he slows down, and with it the tension abates, but then he goes harder again and somehow — she didn’t think was possible — she climbs up once more and peaks, and she has only barely fallen when a third drags her further up and drops her. She had no idea her body could do that.

He finally lets her go. The fall is a long one, seems to take forever for her walls to stop pulsing, for her to feel safe lifting the pillow from her face and taking a full, albeit shaking, breath.

He pulls his fingers out and sits up. Wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Multiples,” he says smugly, tapping her thigh. “Knew you had it in you.”

She’s still shaking, gasping for breath, can’t form words or even thoughts, only a single feeling: emptiness. Horrible, all-consuming emptiness. A need to be filled.

When he lies down beside her, she curls into his chest, lets him put his arm around her and kiss the top of her head, rub her back which makes her writhe with over-sensitivity. She lifts her head and kisses him, throws a leg over his hip and grinds herself against him even though he probably can’t get hard again yet.

He pulls away, holds her face in his hand. “Hey, hey. What’s wrong?”

“Need you to fuck me,” she says, feels like she’s not even coherent. “I feel — it hurts.”

“It hurts?”

“I need something inside me. Please.”

“Okay,” he says, kissing her forehead. He brings his hand between her legs and crooks two fingers inside her.

She shakes her head. “More.”

“I don’t —”

“More.”

He wets a third finger against her and pushes all three inside. The stretch is shocking, agonizing, but somehow it only barely scratches the itch.

“This what you need, baby?” he asks softly.

She nods, holds onto him, shifts her hips to meet his movements and drive him deeper inside. She surprises both of them when she comes again, a small one this time, has to stifle herself by biting his shoulder. He hisses in pain but doesn’t stop. She tastes blood. She’d give anything for it to be his cock inside her, to get on her hands and knees and let him fuck her properly.

Finally, finally, the tension starts to uncoil. The trembling stops. He pulls his fingers out and she looks at the damage she caused, slightly bloody teeth marks in his shoulder, and she manages a muttered “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he says. “Are you alright now?”

She nods, and adds, “But…”

“But what?”

“I still want you to be my first.”

“I know,” he says. “We can talk about it later.”

It’s not a no.

They lie together in silence, and Clarke becomes acutely aware of the wet spot underneath her, the heaviness of sleep dragging her down. Her head is tucked under his chin, and she thinks she’s more comfortable than she’s ever been.

Outside, the garage door rumbles open.

Bellamy bolts upright and scrambles out of bed before Clarke can even process what’s happening. He throws her jeans at her and hops into his pajama bottoms, is about to duck out of the room, when Clarke says, “Your shoulder.”

“Shit.” He grabs his shirt, tugs it over his head while Clarke shoves her legs into her jeans.

“I’ll distract her,” he says. “Sneak into the bathroom and flush and come back out.”

“Okay.”

The back door opens at the same time Bellamy leaves the room. Clarke waits at the edge of the bed and listens, the door a little ajar.

“Have fun?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Octavia says. Clarke hears the thump of a heavy purse and can tell Octavia is in the living room now, out of sight of the hallway, so she sneaks out the door and across the hall. “Where’s Clarke?”

“Bathroom.”

Clarke turns the knob all the way to the right so it won’t make a sound and closes it behind her just as quietly. She flushes the toilet, goes to the sink and washes her hands and face. Combs a hand through her hair, but there’s nothing she can do about the redness of her lips and the flush running from her cheeks to her neck. She takes a second to breathe, realizes she never put her underwear back on. It’s still on the floor in Bellamy’s room.

“You guys barely ate anything,” Octavia says.

“We were saving it for you.” Then he adds, “How’s Jasper?” knowing, obviously, exactly how to distract her.

“The _best,”_ she says, and Clarke breathes a sigh of relief and decides it’s safe to leave the bathroom.

Octavia doesn’t acknowledge Clarke when she comes into the room. She’s already launched into her usual play-by-play of Jasper-said-this, Jasper-did-that, isn’t that so funny?

Clarke grabs her keys and coat, avoids Octavia's gaze, afraid of the potential suspicion she'll find there. When there’s a split-second pause in the monologue, Clarke says, “I think I’m gonna head out, I’m beat.”

“Oh." Octavia gestures at the TV. “But the movie’s not over.”

“Seen it a thousand times.” She shoulders her coat, pulls her hair out from the collar. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

“Okay, bye,” Octavia says, disappointed. “Love you.”

Clarke opens the door. “Love you too.”

“See you, Clarke,” Bellamy says, eyes trained on the TV, where Jack Skellington’s Halloween gifts have begun to attack and terrify the citizens of Christmas Town.

“Night, Bellamy.”

She closes the door behind her, makes her way out to the street where her car is parked. The living room curtains are parted, multicolored Christmas tree lights shining onto the front porch. Through the window she can see Bellamy on the couch, his arm across the back, Octavia curled up on the opposite side. This is how it will always be, she thinks — the two of them, warm and happy together, while Clarke looks in from afar.


	10. Chapter 10

Bellamy’s last day subbing for Diyoza is the Friday before winter break. Clarke has seen no fewer than four girls actually, literally crying over it in the hallway. His bruise is mostly healed now, just some yellowish spots. Last week, Zoe Monroe collapsed in class from taking too much Xanax so that’s what everyone is talking about now. If Clarke took a survey of a hundred students asking, “What do you think of Finn Collins?” she guarantees ninety of them would ask, “Who?”

Bellamy lets the class vote between a movie day or Euchre tournament. Euchre tournament wins hands-down, but Clarke still has one more final to study for so she opts out. Surprising everyone, Bellamy abandons his stack of grading and decides to join. Someone breaks out a portable speaker and puts on music. Someone else brought cookies. Occasionally Clarke will glance up and watch him, being himself for once, setting Mr. Blake aside finally. She wonders if he’ll be sad to leave, or relieved he can at least eliminate the role of being Clarke’s teacher, in addition to all the other things he is to her.

Clarke stays after class. Normally she doesn’t, because AP Calc is on the other side of school, and she’ll see Bellamy again in a couple hours after seventh period. She waits until everyone leaves. Bellamy is erasing the chalkboard where a few of the more artistically adventurous students drew lewd sketches of the Storming of the Bastille.

“Yes?” he asks, his back still to her.

They haven’t been alone in this room since detention. Clarke stands in front of the table, exactly where he’d fingerblasted her into oblivion.

“Just wanted to say goodbye to Mr. Blake.”

He sets the eraser down, wipes the chalk off his hands. He’s wearing his glasses today, no contacts. She watches as he registers her position, hair in pigtail braids, textbooks clutched to her chest.

He glances toward the door, where a horde of students walk loudly past. He straightens a stack of papers on the table, and says under his breath, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“When will we get to be alone again?” She leans in a little closer, lowers her voice. “When can I suck your dick again?”

“Jesus,” he whispers. “I don’t know, baby. But trust me, I’m thinking about it all the time.”

She pouts cartoonishly. He gestures toward the door with a nod of his head. “We can talk later. You gotta get to class.”

“Fine,” she says, and she doesn’t know why or how or what compels the next words out of her mouth: “Love you.”

She’s said it to him a million times before. It’s not a big deal. In fact he doesn’t even react to it, keeps his head down while he continues straightening up, because the first student of sixth period has just entered the room, and Clarke takes it has her cue to leave.

 

* * *

 

It’s a Wednesday afternoon, the week before Christmas. Clarke is at the Blakes’ house, painting Octavia’s nails green and red. Bellamy is grading a stack of finals at the kitchen table. Aurora is at work. Clarke still hasn’t gotten any alone time with Bellamy. She’s tempted to text him sometimes, but he always keeps his text previews on, the volume up, and Octavia is known for looking over his shoulder, picking up his phone, unlocking it, responding to people. When it comes to Bellamy, she has no sense of privacy at all.

Clarke brushes a stripe of read down the ring fingernail of Octavia’s right hand. Octavia’s phone rings — “Sk8r Boi,” which means it’s Jasper.

“Be right back,” she says, picking up the phone and carefully swiping right, bringing it to her ear at the same time she jogs into her bedroom and shuts the door.

Bellamy seems too entranced by grading finals to notice they’re alone now, so Clarke comes up behind him and drops a kiss to the side of his neck. She can feel him freeze. He puts his pen down. Blue smudges pepper his fingers. He turns in the chair; Clarke steps between his legs. He lifts her shirt a little, leans in and presses a kiss to her stomach, his hands on her hips, rough scratch of his beard against her skin. He rests his forehead there, and she runs her fingers through his hair.

Octavia cackles from her bedroom.

He looks up at her and says, “This is dangerous."

“I miss you.”

“I miss you too, baby.”

She bends down and kisses him properly. He rests his hand on her inner thigh and trails it upward, until his fingers are rubbing against her clit over her leggings.

“Can’t wait to get my mouth on you again,” he says.

“When can that happen?”

“Soon, baby. Soon.”

She kisses him again, deeper this time. He rubs at her a little harder, and there’s something about the threat of being caught, Octavia flinging open her bedroom any second, Aurora coming home, that brings her to the edge embarrassingly quickly.

“Keep going,” she whispers.

“Seriously? I’m barely touching you.”

“Yeah, I don’t know, I’m —” Her jaw drops and she grips Bellamy’s hair in her hand. He applies a little more pressure, digs into her clit, and hits just the right spot. Her orgasm rips through her, small and fast and surprising both of them. She bites her lip to keep from making any noise.

She climbs down and he rubs a little slower. “You and your party tricks. That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Benefits of being seventeen.”

She hears Octavia say, “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow,” and the familiar spring-creak of her old mattress.

Clarke bends down and kisses Bellamy once more before spinning around and walking into the kitchen, just as Octavia opens her bedroom door.

 

* * *

 

On Christmas morning, Clarke wakes up and finds Abby at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee and scrolling through something on her laptop. They have one tradition: coffee cake for breakfast. Nothing special, whatever the frozen aisle has on sale. Clarke slices off a triangle and pours herself a cup of coffee and sits across from her mom at the table. They don’t get each other gifts because they both buy themselves whatever they want anyway. Every year, Clarke eats her piece of coffee cake, wishes her mother a merry Christmas, and heads to the Blakes’.

Abby closes her laptop. “I have something for you. Well, two things.”

“Really?”

“The first thing I got and realized, well — you’ll see.” She reaches under the table into a bag by her feet that Clarke hadn’t noticed when she sat down, pulls out a large, narrow box, and slides it across the table. It’s wrapped in gold paper. Clarke guarantees whatever it is, Jackson bought and wrapped it.

She peels off the tape and rips open the paper (the Blakes always use newspaper; Clarke hasn’t gotten a wrapping-paper-wrapped gift in years). It’s an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil.

“For drawing,” she says. And when Clarke doesn’t react, “You still draw, don’t you?”

“I do,” Clarke says, though how Abby knew that, she has no idea. She's never called it "drawing" before, always "doodling."

“You don’t like it.”

“No, I do. I’ve just always used paper is all. It’ll take some getting used to. Thank you.”

Not to mention she has an iPhone already and a MacBook she barely uses. An iPad seems like overkill.

“I got that first and then thought about it. It felt like I was trying to, I don’t know, buy your love or something and — well, that’s why I went for the second thing.” She reaches under the table again and pulls out a smaller package, square and poorly wrapped in the same gold paper, and Clarke gets the feeling Jackson had nothing to do with this one.

Clarke opens it. It’s a small photo album. Black leather binding. It says FAMILY in silver cursive lettering. She opens it to the first page and it’s a picture of the three of them: her mom, her dad, and Clarke as a baby. She turns the page. More baby pictures she didn’t know existed. There’s one of just her dad, probably years before Clarke was born. He has long hair and it looks awful, and his eyes are squinting like he got caught off-guard by the flash. The photo is over-contrasted and a little out of focus. She turns the page: engagement pictures, wedding pictures, pregnancy pictures. A whole life Clarke didn’t know about. Her own life.

“Did you make this?” she asks, because there’s a chance Jackson did.

“I did. I had a box of pictures in my closet, and I decided they weren’t doing anyone any good locked away like that. And I thought — I thought you might like to remember him, in a way that I don’t let myself. It’s not an apology, but I want you to know that I love you, and I see now that I wasn’t there for you when I should have been. There’s no apology big enough for what I’ve done, so I’d like to consider this a step, a small one, in the right direction.”

Clarke doesn’t know what to say. Even if Abby had apologized, Clarke wouldn’t know how to begin the process of forgiveness. Sometimes she doesn’t think she even fully understands the effects of her mother’s absence. She just knows its roots spread under her feet, following her everywhere, tangling itself in everything she is and does.

“Thank you,” Clarke says. She gets to the end of the album. Only about a dozen pages are filled; the rest are blank, and Clarke knows she’s going to sit down with Octavia later today and show her all of it, and they’ll work together filling out as many pages as they can with their own pictures, which are all over Octavia’s room, taped up and stuffed in drawers. Hundreds probably that they’ve taken over the years. And that way the Griffins and Blakes can all be together in one place, like they should be. While they work on it, Bellamy will gripe about the iPad, call Clarke spoiled, complain about slave labor, and ask if he can take a crack at it, as if it’s some very difficult puzzle to be solved and not a user-friendly device. He’ll read the manual front to back before he even turns it on, then play with it all day, and when he’s done, Clarke will sit down with him and pretend to let him teach her how to use it.

That’ll be her day today, what might be their last Christmas together.

She closes the album and wipes at her stupid crybaby eyes, and gets up from her chair and hugs her mother. She can’t remember the last time they hugged.

Abby’s eyes are glassy too when Clarke pulls away. “Don’t feel obligated to stick around. I know you’ve got plans.”

“Thank you,” Clarke says, gathering up the iPad and album. “I love you.”

 

* * *

 

When she gets to the Blakes’, all three cars are parked in the drive, a rare sight. She lets herself in quietly, knowing Octavia, despite being nearly an adult, still wakes up at six a.m. for Christmas morning, and drags Bellamy and Aurora up to open presents and eat breakfast. Then they all fall immediately asleep again. Every year, Clarke tells them that she absolutely _must_ have coffee cake with Abby, rendering her unable to attend the present-opening ceremony. But the truth is, she doesn’t want them buying her any gifts, knowing their money is limited and hers is not.

She gets a trash bag out of the pantry and cleans up the newsprint scattered over the floor, puts the bowties in a shoebox labeled XMAS for their annual reuse. She looks at all the things they gave each other: mace, which Clarke guesses Bellamy bought for Octavia; a spiritual healing book, Octavia for Aurora; a bulk bag of Reese's cups, Octavia for Bellamy; a hideous orange cardigan, Aurora for Octavia, that she probably went nuts over.

Clarke shoves the last piece of newsprint in the bag when she notices movement in her peripheral vision. Out the sliding glass window, Bellamy is standing on the patio, leaning against the banister, looking out over their postage-stamp yard and the covered above-ground pool. An inch of snow fell last night, not the fun kind of snow, but the spitty, icy kind that make the roads slick. And even though it’s freezing, he’s not wearing any shoes. He is, however, wearing a shirt, albeit a t-shirt. Small miracles.

She quietly opens the sliding-glass door, steps out, and closes it behind her. He glances back and says, “Merry Christmas, princess.”

She raises her eyebrows as she comes to stand next to him. “We’re alone.”

“Merry Christmas, baby.”

She lifts up on her toes, waiting, and he leans down to kiss her, his knuckle under her chin.

“Thank you,” she says, falling back on her heels. With every breath, clouds puff out from between her lips. She wishes they could do this inside.

“How was your coffee cake?”

“This year it came with presents and an acknowledgement of thirteen years of emotional neglect. How come you’re not in bed?”

“I was waiting for you. I got you something.”

“Bellamy,” she says, already panicking. There is literally nothing he could get her that she can’t afford to get herself.

He props his hip against the banister and reaches in his pocket. For a wild second, Clarke thinks he’s going to pull out a ring and propose, but he only pulls out his phone, unlocks it and clicks around for a second. Then he shows it to her.

It’s an email. The subject line reads CONFIRMATION: HOCKING HILLS CHALET RESERVATIONS DEC 30 — JAN 1. She scrolls down, sees a picture of a little cabin in the woods, taken in fall. She scrolls down further, sees the price (almost five hundred dollars, yikes), and scrolls back up.

“Are we...going on a trip?” Clarke asks.

He takes his phone back, appears to be getting immeasurable pleasure watching her work it out.

“We are.”

“The three of us?”

“The two of us.”

“What about Octavia?”

“She’s going out of town for New Years with Jasper and Monty.”

Something about that stings, that not only is Octavia leaving with people Clarke considers her friends, but Clarke didn’t even know about it. She tells herself Octavia just forgot to mention it, but then she wonders why she wasn't invited in the first place.

“Aurora?”

“Probably won’t notice.”

She’s still not getting it. Like, it sounds fun, but five hundred dollars for two days in the woods when they can just hang out at home? Seems kind of ridiculous.

“I can’t accept this,” she says. “I didn’t get you anything.”

“Not to sound cheesy, but you’ll definitely be giving me something.”

And then she gets it.

“Oh. Oh my god. You’re kidding.”

“Two days in the woods. You can be as loud as you want.”

She wraps her arms around his neck so quickly he stumbles backward, puts a hand on her lower back to steady the both of them.

“Just to make sure we’re clear,” she says, muffled into his neck. “You’re telling me we’re going to have sex.”

“Yes, we’re going to have sex.”

She pulls away, her hands still on his shoulders. “Intercourse. Your penis in my vagina.”

“As long as you don’t say any of that while it’s happening.”

“You are really going to fuck me.”

“I am really going to fuck you.”

She squeals in excitement, and he shushes her, and kisses her again.

 

* * *

 

Clarke clicks off the radio and says, “Let’s play Questions.”

They’re an hour outside of Arcadia, halfway to the cabin according to the GPS on Bellamy’s phone. Clarke’s feet are propped on her backpack in the footwell. In the truck bed is a big cooler of food so they don’t have to go out — because there’s nowhere even _to_ go out, they’ll be in the middle of nowhere — and between them on the bench is Bellamy’s duffel, over which Clarke is currently draping herself to be closer to him. Octavia left with Jasper and Monty earlier in the morning. They're staying with Jasper's cousins for the weekend in Cleveland. Clarke didn't ask why she wasn't invited, and Octavia didn't offer an answer. Didn't act weird about it at all, like it's a perfectly normal thing, going on a road trip for New Years and not inviting your best friend along. She said she'd be getting back the evening of the first, and Clarke and Bellamy should be back much earlier than that.

“We’re too old for Questions,” Bellamy says, which he’s been saying since she was ten. And anyway, he never participated. It was always Clarke and Octavia shooting questions back and forth, and one to Bellamy on occasion, who refused to answer on the grounds that all their questions were stupid.

“I’ll start,” she says. “What are you looking forward to most?”

He gives her an irritated side-eye, seems to consider not answering, and then gives in. “You know the answer to that.”

“But I want to hear you say it. That’s the appeal of Questions.” When still he doesn’t answer, she says, “What, is Mr. Dirty Mouth getting shy?”

Now he looks even more irritated. “I want to fuck you, okay? Is that what you’re looking for?”

“Yes, thank you. Your turn.”

“What are _you_ looking forward to?”

“You can’t just ask the same question back. That’s not in the spirit of Questions.”

“I still want to know.”

There are a lot of things she’s excited about. How can she even narrow it down? If she’s being honest with herself, it’s not even about the sex, it’s about him. Being with him. Enjoying his company.

“It’s embarrassing,” she says, tucking her face into her hoodie.

He reaches over and takes her hand. “Isn’t the single rule of Questions that you have to be honest?”

“Yes,” she says reluctantly. “Okay, it’s — I’m just really excited to be with you. To pretend we’re together. Like, properly together. Even if it’s temporary.”

She thinks he’ll say something cold, like this is for her education and nothing more, but he only brings her hand up to his lips and kisses the back of it. “I’m excited for that too.”

“So this isn’t just about sex?”

“Is that your next question?”

“It can be.”

“No, it’s not just about sex.”

“Do you love me?”

“Is that your third question?”

“Just answer it.”

“Yes, Clarke, I love you. I always have. It’s never been a secret.”

She wants to argue, because she doesn’t mean that kind of love, fake-little-sister love. She means _in_ love. Girlfriend love. Future-wife love. ‘Til-death-do-us-part love.

Because that’s how she feels about him. The thought is like a lightning strike, illuminating the darkness for only a second, but it’s enough to see everything so clearly, and now she can’t take it back.

Oh, she thinks. She’s in love with Bellamy Blake. She wants to marry him. Have kids with him. Do taxes with him. Go on Disneyland vacations with him. Get a dog with him. Get _two_ dogs with him.

But — she might never have that. They might only have this weekend together.

She pulls her hand away, stares out the window, watches trees pass them by. When she was younger she remembers trailing her eyes down telephone wires, but she hasn’t seen a telephone pole in a long time. Years, maybe. They’ve been taken down. Things change. Things always change.

“Did I already win Questions?” he asks.

She’s not going to cry over telephone poles, or what they might signify. She has to take a deep breath and think about something else: Bellamy naked, Bellamy going down on her, Bellamy’s cock in her mouth. All things in her immediate future.

“You can’t win Questions,” she says. “Your turn.”

He thinks for a second, and says, “If money weren’t an object — which, I guess it’s not for you anyway — and you knew you’d be successful, what career would you want?”

“I'd want to be an artist.” She’s never said it out loud before, never let the words take shape because they seemed so outlandish. Sometimes she won’t even let herself draw when she wants to. It makes her feel guilty for some reason, like it’s something to be ashamed of. She hasn’t drawn anything in months except for playing around a little on the iPad, clunky and awkward with new tools that require new proficiency.

“What? Really?” He sounds surprised. She’s never surprised him before. “Do you even...art?”

“Sort of. It’s just a hobby. I’m not very good.”

“How did I not know this? I thought I knew everything about you.”

The answer of course is that she draws him more than anything else, so of course she’d never bring it to his attention. Out of all the embarrassing things she’s said and done around him, showing him her portraits is by far the most mortifying thought she’s ever had.

“It never seemed important.”

“It’s important enough that it’s your dream career, and I didn’t know.”

“There’s plenty of stuff I don’t know about you either.”

“Like what?”

“Like your past relationships. How many people you’ve slept with. Ninety percent of what you got into in college.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“Because it’s not stuff you need to know.”

“Okay then. My turn. How many people have you slept with?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“You have to. It’s the rules.”

“No, I mean I really can’t answer it. I don’t know.”

“You _don’t know_ how many women you’ve slept with?”

“Not just women.”

“You’ve had sex with a man?”

“Not just _a_ man.”

“Multiple men?”

“Why do you sound so surprised?”

“Because you’re...you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Wait. Miller’s gay. Does that mean you’ve had sex with Miller?”

She watches the twitch of his jaw, the dart of his eyes toward the rearview mirror. He puts on the blinker and changes lanes.

“Oh my god, you did,” she says.

“Don’t slut-shame me. We used to fool around sometimes, okay?” He glances at her. “You’re telling me you’ve shared a bed with O every weekend for thirteen years and nothing ever happened between you two?”

“No! Not once.” Although, she reasons, maybe that’s because of Octavia being ace. “We’ve cuddled, that’s it.”

“Okay, well, I’m a very physical person. I tend to have sex with people I care about. Is that a crime?”

“It’s just surprising. Does that mean you’re bi?”

“What, like you’re not?”

“No,” she says defensively. The truth is, she hasn’t really thought about it. She’s always just wanted, sometimes indiscriminately, yes, but — she's never put a word on it.

“Uh-huh.”

“What?”

“Remember that month you watched _Clueless_ on repeat because you were obsessed with Alicia Silverstone?”

“She’s a good actress.”

“She’s really not. You kept telling me it was because of Paul Rudd. No one watches _Clueless_ for Paul Rudd. That’s like watching _Fight Club_ for Meatloaf.”

“So you think I’m bi.”

“It’s not up to me to tell you what you are or aren’t.” He shrugs. “But you’ve expressed plenty of attraction toward women, so I just kind of assumed.”

“How would I know? How did you know?”

“I don’t know, I just knew. Miller and I fooled around a lot and I liked it, and I fooled around with other guys and liked it, no more or less than I like women or any other gender. So, it made sense.”

“But you had to _do_ stuff to know.”

“It’s not like that. I mean, it could be like that, but you can also know without having done anything. Like, here — would you make out with Alicia Silverstone?”

“God, in a heartbeat.”

“How would you feel if Harper made a pass at you?”

She considers it. Harper is very pretty, and very fun. Who would turn that down?

“I wouldn’t say no,” she admits.

“Well,” he says, “that might be something to think about.”

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like he’s that much older than her. They have so much in common, so much history. Times like this, knowing he’s been with so many people, that he knows exactly who he is and what he wants, makes her feel like a child. Like she doesn’t know anything, not even herself.

 

* * *

 

They get to the cabin around noon, up a terrifyingly windy road. The snow from Christmas has melted but it’s supposed to snow again tonight. The cabin is an A-frame, smaller than she thought it would be, smaller than the Blakes’ house even. The door is so short that Bellamy has to duck to get inside. They bring everything in (one trip only; Bellamy Blake does not make two trips). The first thing Bellamy does is kneel by the fireplace and pile some logs he brought in from the stack outside. She looks over his shoulder while he works, bouncing from the cold. The heat had been set at sixty degrees, and she turned it up to seventy.

“Isn’t there a button?” she asks. “At my house there’s a button.”

“No button. Sometimes humans have to make their own fire."

So she watches him crumple up some newspaper and place it strategically in the fireplace, and then she gets bored and says, “I’m gonna make some hot chocolate.”

On the lower floor of the cabin is the living area, with a couch facing the fireplace, a worn rug over hardwood between them. A kitchenette sits in the corner, just a sink, stove, fridge, and a little table with two chairs in front of a big window overlooking the forest. They’re on a hill, so she can see out for miles and miles over the tops of hundreds of elms. Despite its smallness, the cabin is very modern; all the appliances seem from this century anyway. The bathroom is barely bigger than a closet, but pristine. When she goes in to inspect, she almost hits her head on the slanted ceiling.

Then, the most important thing: the loft. She runs up the narrow stairs onto a platform overlooking the cabin, only wide enough to house a queen sized bed with bright white linens, a wide window above it overlooking the other side of the hill, sun shining through it onto the bed. It’s colder up here than the rest of the cabin. She puts her hands into the slat of sunlight to warm them.

“Bellamy,” she calls over the railing. “Come up here.”

“Just a sec.”

She can hear the crackle and pop of the fire, the hollow echo of Bellamy stoking it to life. The cabin is so small she can hear the crack of his bad knee as he stands up. He comes up the stairs and barely spares a glance to the bed and the window and the view and the low vaulted ceilings. He goes straight to kissing her, pushing her coat off her shoulders, walking her backward toward the bed.

“It’s too cold,” she says.

He pulls off his shirt.

“Won’t be,” he manages before attacking her mouth again, pushes her back until she sits on the bed, then reaches for his belt.

“Are we already doing this?”

“Warm-up exercise.”

He unbuttons his pants and kicks them off along with his boxers, right in front of the uncovered window, not that there’s anyone around. The next cabin over is half a mile deeper into the woods.

He helps her with her clothes, is already undoing her bra while she’s still taking off her sweater, helps her tug off her leggings. She’s too cold to appreciate being naked with him for the first time, just dives under the covers with him and soaks up his ridiculous body heat.

He holds her while she shivers, kisses her again, runs a hand down her side, over her ass. She can feel something different between them. A comfort and easiness that wasn’t there before. Before, it was all so new and weird, and every touch, every kiss felt precious. But now it’s kind of normal, his mouth on hers, chest under her palms. She’s so grateful for a sense of normalcy with him when before it felt like they could never reach it, always hiding, risking glances. But now, they have two days. They can do whatever they want.

“What do you want to do first?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I like this. Being naked in bed with you.”

He frowns at her.

“What?” she asks.

“That’s the least bratty thing you’ve ever said. No demands to go down on you? No bugging me to fuck you already, you’ve already waited too long?”

“I guess you could do that.”

“Don’t sound so excited.”

“We’re always in a hurry. I don’t want to be in a hurry anymore. No one’s going to walk in on us for once, so let’s just slow down.”

He takes her chin and lifts it up. “Who are you?”

“Ha ha.”

“You get years older every time I blink.”

He means it as a compliment, she's sure, but it still hurts. “I don’t want to think about our ages, or the future, or anything this weekend but you.”

"Okay," he says. She nestles back into his embrace and closes her eyes.

 

* * *

 

She wakes up a couple hours later to the mid-afternoon sun piercing through the window straight into her face. Bellamy is at her back, kissing down her spine. She rolls onto her stomach, bunches the pillow under her head, which rids her of the sun problem. He climbs over her legs, and then she can feel it, his cock sliding over her ass, hard already. It feels weird, but not bad, just foreign. He dips it between her legs, slides it into the tight space of her thighs. It’s an exciting feeling, having his cock so close, grazing her slit.

Soon he’ll be able to do this and push right inside her, easy, and it won’t hurt, a sleepy afternoon fuck where all she has to do is lie here and enjoy it. And she is enjoying it, but not in a relaxing way. If anything it’s making her feel empty again, wishing she could push up on her knees and get it over with already. She starts panting when the head of his cock bumps into her clit on each pass. 

“Will you fuck me now?” she asks, muffled into the pillow.

His voice is closer to her ear than she thought. “Not yet, baby. Soon. Come on, let’s try something.”

He climbs off of her and she pops up on her elbows to glare at him, because now she’s all worked up and he has the audacity to be lying on his back.

“What,” she says.

“I want you to sit on my face.”

“You want me to do _what?”_

“It’ll feel good, I promise.”

“What if I suffocate you?”

“Then I’ll die doing what I love.” He pats the pillow by his head. “Come on, climb aboard.”

She gets on her knees and crawls over to him. “Can we maybe not talk like sailors in bed?”

“Then shut me up.”

It’s definitely a strange feeling, straddling someone’s head, but she manages it, naked body in full view of the enormous window, hands clutching the convenient and sturdy-seeming headboard.

“You won’t hurt me,” he says, holding her hips, urging them down. So she lowers herself, keeps all her weight on her knees, and then feels Bellamy’s mouth on her and — well, damn. She grips the headboard harder, the warmth of his tongue against her clit. A few minutes in, she’s straight-up riding his face, and then she’s coming apart, relishing in being able to shout as loud as she wants. Bellamy holds her thighs tightly, keeping her still. It’s a good, solid first orgasm of the day. She’s not totally spent, in fact she’s feeling a surge of energy.

She sits on his chest as she catches her breath. Her weight doesn’t seem to bother him. He taps a beat on her thighs. His beard is all wet.

“Want to check out the shower?” he asks.

And now they’re _showering together._ Clarke has never showered with another person in her life, and it’s not nearly as fun as it sounds. The cabin hasn’t warmed up all the way, so she hogs the spray, until he forcibly picks her up and moves her, and then she’s cold, so she huddles against his back until it’s her turn again.

It gets much more fun when she wraps a soapy hand around his cock. She remembers what he taught her about how to touch him, and does it again here, and then he has her against a wall, kissing her while she works him over, two hands now. She doesn’t think she’s good enough at this to make him come, but his body tenses and his cock pulses, and he makes a grunting noise that’s the loudest he’s ever been aside from his filthy mouth. He comes all over her stomach and it washes away in the spray.

She takes a lot of pride in it, being able to make him feel good. 

 

* * *

 

“Okay, we need to talk about this now,” Bellamy says.

They’re on the couch, Clarke straddling his thighs. They’ve eaten. They went on an evening hike before the snow started. They came back and Bellamy got the fire going again and they made out for a long time on the couch, and now it’s night. _The_ night.

“What’s there to talk about?” she asks.

“Protection, for one.”

“I’m on birth control.”

“I know. But we’re still using a condom.”

She’s already pouting. “Why?”

“One, you need to learn how to use them properly, and two, it’s safe.”

“I’m a virgin. I don’t have any STIs.”

“I might.”

She gives him a deadpan look. “Knowing you, you get checked every six months whether you have sex or not.”

He gives her a return deadpan look that says she’s right.

“We’re still using them,” he says.

She knows she’s not going to win this one. She has no leverage. “Okay, what else?”

“It’s —” He looks at a spot above her head. “It’s probably going to hurt. Like, a lot. There might be blood and — I’m just not looking forward to hurting you, is all.”

For a second she’s about to tell him he’s being ridiculous, until she realizes he’s prompting her to comfort him, which seems bizarre, when she’s the one who’s going to be in pain. “It’s okay. I’ll be fine. Everyone loses their virginity at some point.”

“But," he pauses, as if debating what he wants to say. "You know virginity isn’t real, right?”

“What?”

“It’s a cultural construct to make women feel bad about themselves for having sex. I mean it’s obviously more complicated than that, but I’m assuming you don’t want a lecture right now.”

“But there’s a hymen.”

“Which is a membrane that can tear for any number of reasons. Some people aren’t even born with one. There’s no actual biological component to virginity. It’s all made up. I just wanted you to know in case that’s affecting your decision to do this.”

She can’t really begin to wrap her head around that, like the bisexuality discussion earlier. It seems like a wider perspective than what she’s able to digest right now, and she knows eventually she’ll sit down and think through it and google some stuff, but for now she wants to be fucked, so that’s what’s going to happen.

“Knowing that doesn’t change things,” she says. “I’ll inevitably be in a penetrative-sex situation, and I’d rather have a good first experience in my pocket with someone I trust.”

“Which brings us to the next point. It doesn’t just hurt once. It’s going to hurt the first few times. Maybe more.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

So he’s taken someone’s virginity before. Rather, been someone’s _first penetrative experience_ before.

“We won’t know until we try,” she says. “Is there anything else we need to talk about during this very important business meeting, or can we get started?”

She means it in a teasing way, but he doesn’t laugh. He cups her face in his hands, forces her gaze toward him.

“Are you absolutely, positively sure you want this?” he asks.

“For someone who just told me virginity isn’t a thing, you’re the one making it a big deal.”

“It wouldn’t be a big deal under different circumstances. If we were the same age. But we’re not. This situation is way more complex than you’re giving it credit for. You're Clarke Griffin, which means when you want something, you get it, and you never take the time to think about why you want what you want. Which — I get it. God knows I’ve done a lot of shit without thinking. But for my sake, I need to know you’ve actually, honestly thought this through, and not just followed your desire all the way here.”

Of course she’s followed her desire all the way here. Of course she hasn’t thought about it. What is there to think through? This is Bellamy fucking Blake we’re talking about. 

“I’ve thought about it,” she says. “And I’m ready.”

 

* * *

 

It’s time. Oh god, it’s time. She told herself she wouldn’t be nervous, but she totally is. She’s in the bathroom getting changed, and he’s upstairs waiting for her. She assesses herself in the mirror. She’d bought a pink babydoll set from Victoria’s Secret a few days ago. Lacy, see-through, with a little thong that ties with satin ribbons at the sides. In the fitting room it made her feel sexy, but now she feels kind of silly. What’s wrong with just being naked?

She can’t look at herself too long. Too long, and she starts thinking about Octavia. How crushed and upset and angry she’d be if she found out about her relationship with Bellamy. That not only do they have feelings for each other, not only have they been fooling around for months, not only have both of them outright lied to her, but that they’ve done all of it, absolutely all of it, knowing with complete certainty it would hurt her.

Bellamy’s little speech has wormed its way into her head, and she’s asking herself — why? Why does she want him so bad? Why is she willing to put her desire for Bellamy above her friendship with Octavia? It’s Octavia she goes to the Blakes’ to see. Octavia she falls asleep with. Octavia she comes to with every stupid little thought in her head knowing they’ll all be welcome and taken seriously. Octavia who has been at her side through everything, in the muck with her, needing Bellamy’s rescue just as much, if not more than, Clarke. Octavia is her best friend, and Clarke is knowingly, willingly doing something that would break her heart, just because she wants it.

Then again, if Octavia had invited her to the New Years party in Cleveland, Clarke wouldn't be here.

Bellamy knocks on the door. “You okay?”

She’s shivering a little, chalks it up to the temperature in the bathroom which seems to run five degrees cooler than the rest of the cabin. She opens the door. Bellamy’s expression switches quickly from concerned to _holy shit._ He looks her up and down slowly and says, “Wow.”

Well, she doesn’t feel ridiculous anymore. Some of the sexiness she felt in the fitting room is back. She plucks shyly at the hem. “You like it?”

“You’re gorgeous,” he says, hand on her hip, leaning down for a kiss. She meets him halfway, lets him kiss the nervousness out of her.

“You’re shaking,” he adds.

“I’m cold. Let’s go upstairs.”

So he leads her by the hand up the narrow flight of stairs into the loft. She lies down on her back on the bed. Out the window she can see thick clumps of snowflakes fluttering down from the sky. Downstairs, the fireplace is still crackling. It’s special, she thinks, like she wanted. Better than anything she could have asked for. This is right, she tells herself. It’s right and good and everything is okay. It's just very, very real now.

Bellamy is standing by the bed, staring at her apprehensively.

“What?” she asks.

“You have that look on your face you get before you take a test.”

“What look?”

He schools his face into a pinched expression, wide eyes, furrowed brow, lips pursed together.

“Stop it,” she says. “I do not.”

He sits at the edge of the bed, plays with the ribbon of her thong. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want.”

“I do want,” she says quickly. “I’m just nervous.”

“I know. It’s okay. We’ll go slow.” He runs his hand over her thigh, slots his fingers between her legs, gently teasing. “Any questions?”

The slow, methodical movement of his hand is already relaxing her. “No, Mr. Blake,” she says sarcastically.

He climbs on the bed and crawls between her legs. She parts for him, then right before he's about to kiss her, she says, “Actually, I do have a question.”

“Okay.”

“Is there anything I have to, like, do? Do I just...lay here?”

“That’s a really good and weirdly complicated question,” he says in a very teacherly way. He sits back on his heels. “Short answer, no. You don’t have to do anything. Longer answer, since I have the most power here, what you should do is tell me what you want and don’t want.”

“But how do I know what _you_ want?”

“You can assume I’m already doing it.”

“Then how do I know what I want?”

“Process of elimination, at first, what doesn’t feel good, what’s boring or uncomfortable. Then, experience will tell you what you like and what to ask for. For now my plan is to try things I know and like, and things I know other partners have liked, as much as we can fit into two days anyway, and go from there.”

“Am I stalling?”

“Maybe. But I’m about to go down on you for a long time anyway.”

“Oh. Okay."

He offers one of his arrogant smiles, tugs at the ribbons until they unravel, pulls the whole thong down, wets his middle finger in his mouth and slides it inside her even though she’s still wet and keyed-up from their makeout session earlier, which was actually one of her favorite things they’ve done so far. Fully clothed, heated but lazy, neither of them in a rush. It felt so good just to kiss him without thinking about where they were headed next, who might be around to find them out, clock always ticking down.

He settles onto his stomach. Clarke closes her eyes and lets herself sink into the mattress, gives herself over to his hands and mouth. She tells herself to take her time, just enjoy it, but within minutes he has her tensed and moaning, like he’s written a recipe of what works for her — two fingers, slightly tilted up; small, circular motion with his tongue on her clit, so light it’s barely touching her; an agonizingly slow pace that he speeds up in almost imperceptible increments. She gets so close —

And then he changes something, and it’s back to zero, and she can actually _feel_ his smug little smile while he starts all over again.

Eventually he has her begging, “Please, please, I’m so close, please,” and her thighs are shaking from the strain, her fingers gripping his hair and her hips grinding over his mouth. And thank _god_ this time he keeps going, faster and a little harder, and she’s bracing herself for a sudden drop back to the ground, but instead he lets her go, and she comes hard and loud. It feels like she’s hit freefall, at the peak for a mind-obliteratingly long time.

Bellamy is breathless when he finally lets her go, kisses her thigh, wipes his hand and mouth off on the covers. She can’t think or breathe or feel anything other than an electric current over her skin. He comes up beside her, runs two fingers up her stomach and she nearly screams with how overwhelming just that touch alone feels. She rolls over and lets him spoon her, kiss her shoulder, rub his hand all over her and enjoy watching her writhe.

But then the emptiness hits her again like it did before, almost painful in the way it seems to consume her. She reaches back and fumbles with his cock, says, “I’m ready. I want to — I’m ready.”

He kisses her neck, says quietly in her ear, “Sure you don’t want to rest a minute?”

She shakes her head. “Now. I want it now. Please.”

“Okay.” He gets out of bed and she rolls back onto her back, into the wet spot, not caring, and watches as he squats down and ruffles through his duffel bag, tears off a condom from the strip of them, and pulls out a tube of what she assumes is lube. He tosses both on the mattress and steps out of his boxers, takes himself in hand and strokes idly.

Instead of climbing back onto the bed, he takes her by the legs and drags her down to the edge of the mattress. She yelps in surprise, then again when he slides his cock against her, heavy on her oversensitive clit, picks up the condom and rips it open with his teeth. The packet is shiny gold and the word MAGNUM is written across it in intimidatingly large letters.

Her heart feels like it’s about to punch its way through her ribs. He taps her thigh. “Look at me, baby. Need you to watch me do this, okay?”

She lifts up on her elbows. Already she hates the smell of lubricant and latex, like a damp doctor’s office. She’d played with condom packets before, squished them around in her fingers, but never had any cause to open one, so she’s always been curious. It looks like a sock rolled off someone’s foot, but, like, a balloon version. For some reason she always thought condoms would come in pretty colors like the packets, but it’s only an unattractive taupe color, and she tries not to be disappointed.

“Come on, pay attention. Next time I’m going to have you do it.”

She feels wound tight as if her internal organs want to march out of her skin, but forces herself to watch. He rolls the condom down, pinches the tip, wipes the residual lube on the sheets.

“Is that it?” she asks.

“That’s it.”

“Seems too easy.”

“That’s all the misogynist brainwashing telling you sex is difficult and awful and you’ll die if you have it for fun.”

“Love your pillow talk. Will you please fuck me now?”

"Be patient." He takes the lube, squeezes a little out even though she thought the condom was plenty slippery as it was. He doesn't put it on himself, but slips two fingers into her, then a third, which makes her wince.

She's weirdly offended at the thought of not being wet enough for him, but doesn't mention it. "What's that for?"

"The pain, hopefully." 

He tosses the bottle aside, slides against her again, leans over her and braces himself with an arm beside her head. Kisses her lightly. He reaches between them and centers his cock at her entrance. It stops as if hitting a wall, but he rocks his hips in little movements, pushing in more on each pass, and she can feel her walls part and — it’s fine. Doesn’t hurt at all. She takes a relieved breath.

“That’s just the tip, baby.”

"Oh."

Just a little more. Then the pain comes, so much worse than the stretch of his fingers. It feels like she’s being pulled open, torn in half.

“Stop, stop,” she says, and he pulls out immediately. The pain thankfully doesn’t linger.

“It’s okay,” he tells her, thumb trailing gently across her cheekbone. “No rush. Take your time. Try to relax.”

She convinces herself that most of the pain was in the surprise of pain itself, believing somehow that everyone had always exaggerated it, and she would therefore be immune, because deep-down she thinks she’s made of tougher stuff than everybody else. She remembers asking Harper when they were sixteen if it hurt, and Harper said it had but only for a little bit, and there was no blood, but Monty was absolutely terrified anyway and spent the entire time apologizing. She wishes now she had asked Octavia what it had been like with Jasper, but she knows even if it did hurt, Octavia wouldn’t have admitted it.

“Try again,” she says.

He pushes in again, and now at least she’s prepared for what’s to come. He starts rocking his hips, and she knows she shouldn’t grit her teeth, but she has to. Her entire body is tensed up. She feels like she can’t breathe.

“You have to try to rel —”

“Just. Stay there a second. Don’t move.”

So he stills, runs his hand up and down her side, kisses her neck. Eventually she gets used to the feeling, and the pain subsides, and she says, “Okay.”

He pushes in a bit more, what feels like inches at a time but she knows has to be centimeters or less. The pain returns, unlike anything she’s ever felt, sharp and unceasing. Not even a throbbing sensation to allow split-second reprieves, but a constant sting. It doesn’t feel like a cut or bruise or scrape or any other pain she’s familiar with. An eternal widening, a stretching-apart, like entropy.

She’s not crying but her eyes are wet, her nose is hot. Tears streak down the sides of her face. Bellamy kisses them, and finally stops moving, and she can feel his hips pressed against her. The sheets have found their way into Clarke’s tightly clenched fists.

“Good girl, all the way in,” he mutters against her throat. It makes her feel marginally better.

“Move now,” she says. “Please.”

He pulls out a little — immediate relief, a fluttering in her stomach like airplane turbulence, like driving over a hill. Pushes back in — pain.

His head is hanging down, face in shadow, but his expression is strained.

“Does it hurt you too?” she asks.

He shakes his head but she thinks he’s lying. “You’re just…really tight.”

She gets used to the feeling: out, relief; in, pain. She figures if he goes fast enough, she might not be able to tell the difference between the pain and relief, so she says, “Faster.”

He picks up the pace a little, and she’s wrong actually, the faster he goes, the more relieved she feels overall, and she chases that feeling until she realizes the pain is gone, at least the stretch-feeling pain. A shadow of soreness remains, but it pales in comparison to the finality of fullness.

Then it occurs to her — he is _inside of her._ Bellamy Blake is inside her. They’re joined together, closer than they’ve ever been.

She wraps her legs around his hips, her arms around her neck. “Harder.”

“You sure?”

“Doesn’t hurt.” She kicks him with her heel. “Harder.”

He slams into her and she cries out, only a little bit in pain but the rest of it with a surge of pleasure. Being fucked is like an iceberg — the pain is the jagged shards jutting out of the water, but the promise of pleasure runs much deeper, a resonant energy coursing through her wanting _faster harder more._ She drags her nails down his back, needs to sink into him in turn somehow, get even closer so they don’t have to be two people anymore, just a single writhing mass.

“More,” she says, can’t recognize her own voice.

“Clarke —” he says, just as strained.

“I’m fine, I promise. Please just —”

He stands upright, takes her by the back of her knees and spreads her legs wider, pounds into her fast and hard. She enjoys just watching him take his pleasure from her, makes her feel good in a new way, like just her body itself knows how to please without her having to learn and study and practice. Like some passive part of her can be good all on its own.

He reaches between them and rubs his thumb in circles over her clit, and that seems like a game-changer. She doesn’t think she can come again, but it feels so good, like so few things can feel good — sneaking raw cookie dough, stepping barefoot onto soft sand, gold clouds of autumn sunsets, hot chocolate after a snowball fight, first kisses on school-day afternoons with your best friend’s brother.

Then he leaves her and she’s empty again, but it’s only to guide her onto her hands and knees. She goes willingly even though she misses looking at him, but that thought is quickly set aside when he pushes into her again and it feels even _better_ than being on her back, and also for some reason filthier, like she has even less control than before. She’s tempted to ask him to spank her like he did in detention, but it might be too soon for that. She’ll ask for it tomorrow. For now his hands are gripping her hips and he’s pulling them back to meet his thrusts, an easy, rapid rhythm.

“Like it like this, baby?” He sounds hot when he says it, but she knows behind it is an actual question.

“Uh-huh,” is all she can manage. Her elbow is in the wet spot. She doesn’t care. She’s making loud noises that aren’t even moans or groans, she’s not sure what they are but they’re high-pitched and she can’t help them. She doesn’t care. She’s definitely nowhere near coming, but she doesn’t care. This feels like an entirely new kind of orgasm.

There’s something weirdly humiliating about this position, but not in a bad way. Animalistic. She watches the snow fall outside, the waxing moon over the treetops. Her voice climbs louder, because she realizes she can, doesn’t have to hold back. Every little movement she makes distorts the pleasure into different shapes. She lowers her face to the mattress and it’s a new angle, sits up higher and that’s new too. Curves her spine in a certain way — a completely different feeling. She’s even starting to push back on him, meet his thrusts. The slapping sounds are filthy, one of the side-effects of sex she’d never thought of. She imagined sex in so many different ways but there’s so much she got wrong: the sounds, the smells, the way her mind slips in and out of conscious thought. How time seems to stretch.

She wants him to come. Wants to feel his cock empty inside of her. But she wants to see it too, so she says, “Back to before,” even though that doesn’t make sense, but he gets it, pulls out, flips her onto her back, and sinks back in, all startlingly graceful.

Her ankles are locked around his back, and she can feel his breath at the side of her neck.

“Will you come in me?” she asks, and can feel him nod, change his pace from rapid and shallow to slow and deep. He kisses her, keeps kissing her, and she can feel his body tense, breathing grow harsh, movements skip out of the rhythm he’d set. He squeezes his eyes shut, stops breathing and goes completely still, then lets out a long exhale that holds the smallest of moans. Inside, she can feel his cock twitch and pulse, and she wishes there was no condom between them, so she could feel the heat of him too, of what he’d leave inside her.

He stays still, just breathing, and she breathes with him. His skin his fever-hot, slick with sweat. Hers, too. This might be her favorite part, him still inside her but without any drive left, nothing to do but lie here and enjoy the intimacy of the moment.

But it can't last. He pulls out. She winces again. He kisses her cheek as if in apology and asks, “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

He rolls onto his back, tugs the condom off and tosses it into the trash. She catches a streak of red on it.

“You were right,” she says, propping her head up on her palm. “I didn’t have to do anything.”

He opens one eye to glare at her. “You know what they call that?”

“What?”

“Being a pillow princess.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“It’s not a compliment.”

“Well, I like it."

He looks very amused. "Of course you do."

 


	11. Chapter 11

Clarke wakes up first the next morning, a half-dream, half-memory floating around about the only other morning she can remember waking up next to him, the night the three of them fell asleep in a blanket fort they’d built in the living room. Partway through the night Octavia had gotten uncomfortable on the floor-appropriated couch cushions and went to sleep in her room. Bellamy and Clarke didn’t stir, so Clarke opened her eyes at dawn to see Bellamy asleep on the floor with only a throw pillow under his head, fully dressed, and no blanket. He was fifteen, and committed to staying in the living room with them because it was one of the nights Aurora wasn’t coming home; he believed for some reason that the living room was more dangerous than Octavia’s bedroom. 

He was sleeping then as he is now, on his back, arm thrown over his head, hand on his stomach. He doesn’t snore, or even breathe particularly deeply. His lips are slightly parted. In the night, Clarke seems to have stolen all the blankets, so he has none, but doesn’t seem to care even though he’s naked. The morning sun is coming through the opposite side of the cabin so the loft is left in partial shadow while the living room below is filled with light. Outside, the snow has fallen in a thick shroud over the trees and grass. The window is frosted over, perfect like a picture. 

Clarke risks climbing out of bed and immediately regrets it. A blast of cold hits her naked body. She picks up the first item of clothing she finds, his t-shirt on the floor, and puts it on. She still feels slick between her legs from last night. Quietly she kneels down where her backpack is resting by the bedside table and pulls out her sketchbook and a 2H pencil. She climbs back into bed, cross-legged, and yanks the comforter over her lap, opens her sketchbook to a blank page, and starts drawing him.

She wonders if she’ll ever get used to seeing another person naked, a person she’s attracted to and allowed to touch, a person whose skin she’s tasted, a person who has been inside of her. She challenges herself not just to look at him, but to really see him, the things other people don’t notice because he is too big and intimidating and male. 

She appreciates the softness of his body relaxed, the quiet of his breath. As she maps out a rough sketch, she notices for the first time that his torso is slightly too long, out of proportion to his legs. His hands, too, which seem so big in comparison to hers, when put with the rest of him, are slightly stubbier than they should be. She knows these things because she has drawn his body from memory before and never sight, and she has always gotten it wrong. Has never been able to get each mole right, each scar from fights and injuries and accidents she has likely lived through with him, their history mapped across his body. 

She loses herself in the drawing, hands working while her mind narrows. She’s so deep in concentration that she doesn’t notice when he opens his eyes. It’s only when she makes her way back up to his face that she sees him watching her, sleepy and amused, and she jolts in surprise, hugs her sketchbook to her chest instinctively.

“Sorry,” she says, scrambling to close the sketchbook. “Sorry, I —” 

He takes her by the forearm. “Let me see.”

His morning voice is deeper than his daytime voice. Scratchy, rough. She knows this about him, has heard his grouchy pre-coffee voice most mornings of her life, but in this context it’s different, sweeter. 

“It’s not done.”

“Should I just lie here while you work?”

She closes the book all the way. “No, I know you want coffee.”

“Coffee can wait.”

She’s a little stunned by that. If he doesn’t get coffee first thing in the morning, he’s basically intolerable. Snippy, Octavia calls it. 

“Okay,” she says, and opens the book again, goes back to drawing. Bellamy closes his eyes, and maybe he falls back asleep or maybe not, but she appreciates the easy silence, the smell of cedar and cold, the softness of the mattress and blankets, the promise of the day to come. No hurry anymore. She’s had sex. She’s fallen in love. She knows where she belongs: with him, in this cabin in the woods, celebrating the end of the worst and best year of her life. If anything, for once she would like time to slow down. Her whole life she’s been eager to find out what’s next, what can be learned, how she can grow. But now she wants stillness. Wants to burrow into time and stop it from ticking forward.

“How are you feeling today?” he asks eventually. Awake, then.

“Good.”

“Sore?”

“A little.” But it’s a good soreness, like a post-workout soreness. Not pleasurable but not entirely painful, either. Uncomfortable at best. She didn’t notice until he mentioned it. “You?”

“I’m not sore, no.”

“I mean — feelings-wise.”

“Good,” he says, but it doesn’t sound as simple as the word implies.

“What do you want to do today?”

“Talk. Eat. Fuck. Sleep, maybe.”

She nods. “Sounds like a plan.”

He reaches down and strokes himself. He’s gotten hard. She didn’t think the term “morning wood” was literal, thought it meant something else, but now she can plainly see it does not. 

“You can’t do that,” she says. “You need to be still.”

“Can’t expect me to lie still when you’re looking like you look.” 

“Like I just woke up?”

“No. Beautiful.”

She lowers her head a little, doesn’t even know how to respond to something like that. No one’s ever called her beautiful, at least not the way he just said it. He brings his hand to her knee, runs it up her bare thigh, under the hem of the shirt and over her hip. His other hand is still working himself slowly, watching her watch him. Her breath speeds up, her heart. Nothing is even happening but her hands are starting to shake, and there’s no way she can keep drawing. She closes the book and sets it down, climbs on top of him. 

Last night’s wetness couples with whatever he just drew out of her. She slides over his cock. He takes her hips in his hands and guides her movements, his eyes fluttering shut, lip bitten between his teeth. Doesn’t even make a fuss about condoms, thank god, but she’s also not sure how this position works exactly, if he just slips inside or if she has to do it herself. She feels like she has a superpower now — she can have sex. A sudden skill, like riding a bike. One minute you can’t and the next you can, and you never forget. There's no going back to not-knowing. She’s amazed at how mindless it is, how she has no idea what she’s doing but her body seems to. It chases what feels good on her behalf, registers what feels good for him, operates in a cycle. Soon she’s panting over him, her hands on his chest, ready for him to push inside already. 

“Can I?” she asks. Her voice is left hoarse and high from all the shouting last night.

He nods. She sees the mindlessness in him too, the total lack of concern, ignorance of consequence. 

She reaches between them and holds his cock in hand, places it at her entrance, and lowers herself. Like last night, it barely seems like it’ll fit at first, and it hurts just as much as it did then, but now it’s a sweet agony, one she knows how to wade through. He digs his fingers into her thighs and she watches his face as she seats herself fully — mouth open, eyes squeezed shut in an almost pained expression. She shifts her hips back and forth, unsure, an experiment, and quickly determines it doesn’t work. It only moves him around inside of her, like stirring a drink, so she switches to up and down, and — fuck, that’s it. That’s how it works. It’s more strain on her knees and thighs but that’s okay. She has to brace herself with a hand on the headboard, and for a while he lets her fuck herself on him, what feels like, bizarrely, a concession that she doesn’t understand until he starts meeting her movements with his hips, urging her faster, and eventually she stops having to move at all because he’s fucking up into her, hard, and she’s crying out because the pain is gone already, so much quicker than last night.

Now she has to grip the headboard with both hands so he doesn’t fuck her right through the window. She liked this position at first but is quickly growing tired of it. It’s a lot of work, more control than she really wants, too much thinking, and she realizes she can’t come like this — it feels amazing, but an orgasm is nowhere in sight, and briefly she’s worried she’s doing something wrong. Before she can dwell on it, he sits up and mutters, “Hold on,” so she clings to him as he rolls her on her back, bends her knee to her chest and fucks her hard and fast, all without slipping out of her.

“Like this better, don’t you, babygirl?” 

She nods. It’s true, being on her back so far feels the best, both physically and in another way, a way she can’t really articulate. He pushes her shirt up to her armpits, plays with her nipples while he fucks her, and the sounds she makes are embarrassing. 

After a while it starts to hurt again in a new way, like she’s raw inside, and she squeaks out, “Want you to come now.”

He gives a little nod, pulls out and rolls her on her hands and knees again, pushes back in. He grips the shirt in his fist from hem to collar, twists, uses the tension to fuck her back onto his cock. She’s getting loud again; the tightness of the shirt across her neck and shoulders renders her immobile, unable to control her own movements at all. Something clicks — restraint. That’s what she wants, now and forever. To have everything done to her and be unable to do anything in turn. 

Inside of a minute he loses his rhythm. She almost wants him to come inside her, but also, she’s surprised how done she is, without having come herself yet, almost ready for a nap and they haven’t even gotten out of bed for the day. Sex takes a lot of energy.

He pulls out and she’s not really sure what he’s doing, so she waits for an order. She figures it out just as she feels the first hot streak down her lower back, hears the low desperate noise in his throat. A wet trail a little lower now, on her ass. She can feel it drip down her thigh. 

He finishes, catches his breath, and says, “Don’t move.”

The temperature of her body ratchets up with that feeling again, the humiliation without negative connotation. He just came all over her and all she can do is stay on her hands and knees waiting for him to tell her what to do next. She loves it.

He comes back with a towel and cleans her up. She curls onto her side, catches sight of his softening cock and the ring of red around the bottom. “I bled again.”

He lies down beside her and kisses her forehead. He’s kind of sweaty now and she likes that, likes the smell of his warm body encompassing her.

“It’s okay,” he says. “Won’t always be like that.”

“We didn’t use a condom.”

“I know.”

“Should we have?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t we?”

He sighs, runs a hand through his messy hair. “Sometimes sex puts you out of your right mind and you do stupid things.”

“Will anything bad happen?”

“As long as you’re good about taking your pills and aren’t on antibiotics, probably not.”

“And I didn’t come. Am I supposed to?”

“Not many people can come from penetration alone. You need clitoral stimulation.”

“Love when you talk like a sex documentary.”

“You asked.”

“Can we continue this documentary in the shower?”

“Yeah,” he says, groaning as he sits up. “You get in, I’ll start a pot of coffee.”

 

* * *

He gets her off with his fingers in the shower, her clutching his arm, knees almost giving out. She complains about having to get dressed in real clothes, but it’s too cold not to. He concedes to wearing pajamas all day, at least. And for him that means flannel bottoms and no shirt, glasses because he doesn’t feel like putting in his contacts. For her, yoga pants and his hoodie. He makes bacon and eggs for breakfast; she’s on toast duty. They eat, and talk, and when they’re done, they drink coffee and talk some more. Bellamy can start a topic anywhere and within five minutes have logically made it to the other side of the world and a century back. This time he starts with the story of how he started fooling around with Miller (thirteen, bored, horny, watching porn together and jerking off separately, then together, then kissing, and they only stopped when Miller fell in love with Bryan the next year, but it took another year for Bryan to return those feelings), and ends, ten minutes later, with his very complicated thoughts on the Gettysburg Address, how the Bliss Copy gets all the credit when the Everett and Bancroft Copies are obviously superior texts. He even wrote a long and sternly worded email to the publisher of their high school textbook lamenting the exclusion of the other copies, and their overall section on the Civil War itself, which, he says, “makes it sound like slavery is a reasonable lifestyle choice. It’s the worst textbook I’ve ever read.” Needless to say, Macmillan Learning has blocked his email. 

Clarke can listen to him talk for hours, would love nothing more in fact than to do that all day, which is exactly what happens. They move from the table to the living room, and he lights another fire. She gets out her sketchbook and starts drawing again, and he picks up where he left off on the widespread misconceptions about the Civil War while she outlines his profile. Occasionally he says things like, “And I don’t even  _ like  _ US history,” but will then go on to give a detailed account of some obscure historical figure Clarke has never heard of, outraged that their names haven’t lived on in the layperson’s mind, outraged too that the public school system is such a failure, and that he only learned the word “colonialism” and its greater context when he got to college. It’s kind of amazing how much he talks when he doesn’t have a newspaper in front of him.

Later, when he brings up the promised condom lesson, she rolls her eyes but acquiesces. She kneels between his legs and puts her mouth over him, gets him hard and wet, then he walks her through rolling the condom on, which is slimy and gross and she hates it, but then she pulls down her pants and sits on his lap and all her irritation is momentarily gone — 

Until only a couple minutes later, when she gets tired of being on top again, and whines about it, which makes him laugh, and they switch positions so that Clarke is bent over the back of the couch. He pulls her hair. She asks to be spanked and he delivers, not as hard as he had in detention, but enough that she’s crying out and begging for more. This time, the sex is quick and rough and doesn’t hurt at all. She’s amazed at how natural it all feels, both new and old, as if desire and its ability to be satiated always been part of her. 

They go for a hike when it’s warmest out, barely over twenty degrees. There are no trails out here, but the trees aren’t too dense, plenty of sunlight filtering through. Their boots crunch the frozen ground over fallen leaves and compacted snow. She’s wearing three layers, but he’s only wearing a scarf, a t-shirt, and his leather jacket, not even zipped up. She points out little animal footprints she finds. He steadies her as she climbs over a log. After a while, he pushes her against a birch tree and kisses her, his cold nose pressed against her cheek, their combined breath escaping in clouds. 

They find a big rock under a frozen waterfall, long stalactites of icicles hanging down. They sit down and look at its stillness, her head on his shoulder, gloved hands held. Nowhere to be. Nothing to do. No one around. It feels like a dream, Clarke thinks, but she knows it isn’t, because her mind could never devise something so beautiful. 

They get lost on their way back. It’s getting dark by the time they find the cabin again. They fix cheeseburgers for dinner, and talk for a long time after. Clarke is curled up on the kitchen chair, her chin propped on her knee, warm from the heat of the kitchen and fireplace. It’s nearing nine p.m. according to the clock on the stove. Three more hours left in the year. Twelve more before they have to head home.

As they’re cleaning up dishes, Bellamy slots himself behind her at the sink, kisses her neck, sneaks one hand between her legs and another under her shirt, gets her worked up fast. Then he lowers her yoga pants down to her thighs, bends her over the counter, pushes into her. They fuck like that for a while, until she can’t bear to be facing away from him anymore. She turns around and kisses him. They make their way out of their clothes, and Bellamy lifts her onto the counter, slides back in. It’s just about the most uncomfortable position she can imagine, but in its discomfort is an intense pleasure — she has no room to lean back, nothing to hold onto. She has to cling to him. Her legs are shaking from the strain. She’s spread wide. It feels so good she could come like this, so she licks the pads of her fingers and rubs her clit. Bellamy’s mouth is a fountain of filth —  _ Fuck, baby, gonna come on my cock?  _ and  _ That’s right, I’ve got you _ — and she comes moments later, nearly screaming, clenching around his cock so hard that he nearly loses it, has to squeeze his dick at the base until it passes. Then he picks her up from the counter and lowers her gently to the floor in front of the fireplace, where it’s warm and bright. He asks if she wants to be on top (smiles as he says it, a joke already) and she says no, of course not, not realizing she’ll end up with rug burn on her ass, but she doesn’t care. 

After, they lie beside each other on the rug, cooling off, not touching. Her skin is on fire and soaked in sweat, muscles sore, cunt sorer, shoulders and ass rug-burned to hell. She’s looking up at the peak of the ceiling, where a skylight glitters with dozens of stars. She thinks she’s happier than she’s ever been, than she ever wants to be again. She wants this to be her best moment, the memory she conjures when distracting herself from getting blood drawn, what she comes back to when she’s bored in class or stopped at red lights. When she gets close with new people, she wants to indulge them with this story,  _ On the last day of the weirdest year of my life… _

Only one thing can make it better. She turns her head lazily toward him. His hand is on his chest; he’s staring up at the skylight too, glow of the fire flickering across his face. 

“Are you in love with me?”

His breath stills on the inhale. The fire pops loudly. Outside, she can hear the soft hoot of a barn owl. 

He finally exhales. He closes his eyes. 

It seems so stupid now. She doesn’t know what she was expecting.  _ Of course you idiot,  _ maybe? Instead she gets a silence so cold it’s as if there’s not a fire roaring beside her at all. She’s afraid to move, to think, to breathe. So she lies still, hoping he’ll say something, anything. A confirmation, a denial, a stupid joke, a lecture on Ulysses S. Grant. 

The hardwood creaks as he sits up, shoulders hunched as he brings his knees to his chest, a hand over his eyes like he’s exhausted by a single six-word question. 

“I’m in love with you,” she says. “You know that though, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I know. I’ve known for a long time.” He breathes heavily into his palm and it ruffles his hair, which he then combs back. “Can we talk about this when we get home?”

She can’t stand the thought of pressing pause on this conversation, not when the answer to her question is anything other than an enthusiastic  _ yes.  _

“No,” she says. “I want to talk about it now.” She’s irrationally proud at the steadiness of her voice. She sounds like an adult, because this is an adult situation and she needs to behave like one.

“Okay, fine, we can talk about it.”

She sits up, feeling suddenly exposed in her nudity even though he’s naked too. She reaches for his hoodie, winces as she climbs to standing and retrieves her bottoms from the kitchenette. While she’s there she downs a glass of water, refills it, brings it back to him, which he takes, then she goes to the bathroom (“Always pee after sex,” he told her at some point earlier today, followed by a graphic explanation as to why), and when she returns, dressed now, he’s still in the same spot. 

She perches on the couch, feels like crying, but what’s new? She doesn’t let herself. He’ll just cave, come to her rescue like always, tell her what she wants to hear. But she doesn’t want to hear what she wants to hear; she wants the truth. 

“I don’t know where to start,” he says.

He won’t look at her, and that’s bothering her more than anything else. More than his nudity, more than his stillness. 

“You could answer my question.”

He stares into the water glass, swirls it slowly. “You know it’s not that simple. We’re not going to get a happily ever after, Clarke.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve done this before.”

Coldness seeps into her toes, her fingers. Snow has started to fall, already coats the skylight which had just moments before been clear. The clock on the stove reads half-past ten. 

Bellamy gets up, finds his boxers. She listens as he goes into the bathroom, comes back out. The creak of the stairwell as he makes his way up the loft, rustle of rooting through his duffel. She listens, but all that’s in her mind is,  _ I’ve done this before. _

He comes back down and sits on the other side of the couch. Sweatpants and t-shirt now. He watches the fire.

“Her name was Gina,” he says. “She was my professor.”

Oh.

“I was a little older than you. Sophomore. Twenty. Gina was thirty-seven. I took her US history class, and I was just. Obsessed. The way she spoke, how passionate she was, confident, well-traveled, well-educated. And beautiful. Just — stunning. Elegant. You don’t meet people like her in Arcadia. I went to her office hours every week with some stupid question about becoming a teacher. Pedagogical inquiries, I called them, to make her laugh. She answered all my questions. She was patient and kind. Took me seriously. I thought I was being subtle but she had to have known. I was a wreck every time we made eye contact. The semester ended and I was — I couldn’t handle it. So I applied for the honors program. Went to her the next semester asking if she’d be my thesis advisor for a project I wanted to do on World War II. She said sure and we started working together and — I don’t know. She was married and I knew it, saw the ring, the pictures on her desk. A fucking wedding picture, even. She talked about him sometimes. I didn’t care. Didn’t let myself think about it. At this point she’d warmed up to me a little. I flirted and she flirted back. My pedagogical inquiries turned into questions about her research, then her interests, then her life. I told her a little about Mom and O and —” He clears his throat, looks down at his hands. “You. But things were different, you know, between us. You were just little-sister-part-two to me then.

“Anyway, we’d moved from her office to a coffee shop. From the coffee shop to her apartment. She had a visiting professorship, so her husband was still in Chicago and she went home on weekends. I don’t know how it happened. She was so confident about everything. It all felt so normal. I thought I had the whole thing under control. Thought I was calling the shots. But that’s how good a teacher she was. She opened all the doors and I walked through them. 

“A little after I turned twenty-one, I brought over a bottle of wine and we drank it and I kissed her. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Her kissing me back was probably the stupidest thing she’s ever done. But it just — went from there. We had sex, and I stayed the night, and we had sex again in the morning. Then I came over the next night. And the next. She let me in every time. I didn’t offer a bullshit excuse, I just knocked on her door and told her I wanted her. We didn’t talk about it. I know she felt guilty but she never let it show. The guilt made it better somehow. The shame. 

“Remember the summer I didn’t come home? That’s why. I lived at Gina’s apartment. Got a job at a body shop down there. Every weekend I went absolutely nuts knowing she was with her husband. Then in my junior year she won some award. I went to the ceremony and he was there. It killed me. She’d given me no reason to think she’d leave him for me, but I believed it anyway. I thought she was in love with me. I thought we’d be together for a long time, while also knowing it was completely temporary. That’s what ended things, meeting him. She even introduced me to him. Called me by name as if he would know. As if she talked about me. It made me sick, that he knew about me but didn’t know who I was to her. After that, I finally asked her how she felt about me, the way you asked me just now. She said she loved me, but I didn’t believe her. She couldn’t have loved me the way I loved her and still have stayed with him. I asked if she was going to divorce him. She said no. And it wasn’t just that she said no, it was the  _ way  _ she said it. Like, of course not. It wasn’t a thought that ever crossed her mind, that I would be worth leaving him, that I was anything other than a — I don’t know, indulgence? And why would I be? I was just a kid, a mechanic with a useless history degree. He was her husband, a tenured professor at Northeastern. I had nothing on him.

“Her professorship ended. I never heard from her again. Never even said goodbye. And I realized, the entire time it was happening, over a year, I felt completely alienated — from everyone, from college life. I didn’t have any friends. I’d lost interest in my classes. That’s what these relationships do. The aquarium, I called it. You’re on the inside looking out. It’s like, you know better than everyone else, like you’re in on this big secret. People your age, they’re out there fumbling around and getting things wrong, making mistakes that turn into regrets, but you know how it’s really done. You know how to give as good as you get. You know how it feels to be seen and loved and understood, and the rest of the world is over there, having no idea the things you know. What it is to love someone older and smarter and more confident than you, a mentor, someone who can hold your hand and teach you how to become the person you’ve always wanted to be. But it has a cost. It’s temporary. Unsustainable. And once you’ve had it, nothing else is ever as good. It’s an affliction, one that I willingly, selfishly gave you, because I wanted you to feel what I felt. I wanted to feel what I had with Gina again. I didn't want to be alone in this anymore.

“It’s so much better and so much worse on this side of the coin. To give you all of your firsts. No — to take your firsts. To make you genuinely and purely happy in a way you may never feel again, knowing you may never feel it, because this, what we have right now, is a feeling that can’t be replicated. I can’t keep you in the aquarium anymore, Clarke. I do love you, some days so much it’s physically painful. I’m drowning in the complicated, disgusting ways I love you. And I’ve been so fucked-up over it, that I love someone knowing that love is a toxic thing. That my love, the best and purest thing I have to give, can and will hurt you. All the while doing it behind my sister’s back, knowing she’d hate me for it, and taking a sick amount of pleasure in the shame of it. So yes, Clarke. Yes I am absolutely, completely, stupidly in love with you, and it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

He reaches up and wipes at his cheek with the side of his hand. He’s crying. Bellamy Blake is crying. That’s never happened before, not once in her entire life. 

She feels like she’s been looking at this entire situation through a pinhole. It’s so much bigger and darker and more complicated than she ever gave it credit for. She thinks about how he must have felt the day she came into his room asking to kiss him, seeing all the old patterns he’d already lived. Knowing they would lead to disaster but still yearning for the journey itself. 

“I kept comparing our relationship to what I had with Gina, at first.” His voice is raw, like it’s been scraped out of his throat. He sniffs, wipes at his nose. “But with Gina, I was just her student. You’re not only my student, you’re also my sister and daughter and friend. And I didn’t realize it until recently — I’m really all you have, in terms of an adult who cares about you. And I let this happen anyway, knowing not only the consequences, but — you’re not in a position to say no to me, Clarke. Because in a second I have the power to take your whole world away. Your entire support system. You might not see it this way now, but I’ve taken your trust and twisted it to feed my interests, under the guise of helping you. Teaching you. But I want it too, and that means I’ve taken advantage of you. It would be one thing if I had no idea what would happen, but I do. I know exactly what will happen. Neither of us is going to come out of this unscathed.”

“I don’t believe that,” she says, finding her voice again. “You would never hurt me.”

He finally looks at her. His eyes are wide and red-rimmed, glassy, fire flickering in the reflection of his tears. “Wouldn’t I? Haven’t I already?”

“No, of course you haven’t, you —”

“I’ve set you up for the worst fall of your life.”

“You haven’t. We’re going to go home, we’ll talk to Octavia, apologize, and she’ll be upset, but she’ll get over it. Don’t look at me like that, she will.”

“And then what? We both rot in Arcadia for the next eighty years?”

“I don’t know. We’ll make it work. We’ll do what it takes to make it work.”

“You’re going to leave, Clarke. You’re going to leave, and you’re not coming back. And that’s not just a fact, it’s an order. There’s nothing for you here now or ever.”

“You’re here. Octavia’s here. My mom is here.”

“You want to know the big secret about adulthood no one ever tells you? School ends. School ends, and you cross the finish line, and there’s nothing for you on the other side. So all these people you love might be here, but what are you going to do with all the hours in a day? What are you going to do the first year? The fifth? Tenth? Fiftieth? Are the three of us honestly going to help you grow into the person you want to become?” 

“Yes. That’s all you’ve ever done for me.”

“Secret number two: in a few years, you’re going to realize I never knew anything at all, and I’m just as lost and lonely as anyone you’ll ever meet.”

“It’s not true. You — you have a degree, and you know how to fix stuff, and you always know the right thing to say, and —”

“And when you’re my age, you’ll have all that, too. You’ll get caught up to me eventually, bypass me, lap me a hundred times, and you’ll see I wasn’t worth it. I’m a dime a dozen, Clarke. And if I’m being honest with myself, sometimes I think a lot of the reason I’m into this is because you make me feel like I’m a better person than I really am. You look at me like I’m worth something.”

“You  _ are.”  _

“You still don’t get it.” He turns toward her, takes her hand between both of his. “You love me because I’m the only adult who’s ever paid any fucking attention to you.”

She jerks her hand away, feels like he’s reached into her and pulled out everything she’s ever hidden from him, as if he’s been able to see all of it this whole time. All her secrets. Her darkest thoughts she barely lets herself think, refuses to bring to the light. Her composure breaks, familiar wash of pressure behind her eyes, vision warping. “Don’t you dare tell me how I love you.”

“You don’t love me for who I am. You love what I am to you.”

A sob cracks over her words: “Stop it. It’s not true.”

“I’m sorry.”

That’s what she hates most — that he’s not cruel. He’s not a predator. He’s never lied to her or had ill intentions toward her. The very nature of their relationship is the evil, beautiful, horrible thing. The twisted tragedy of their reality.

And suddenly she can’t bear it. Can’t breathe. The cabin is too hot, too small. Before she knows what she’s doing, she’s standing, rushing out the front door. No shoes, no coat. Snow-covered gravel digs into the soles of her feet but she keeps on, full moon hanging over the trees. She follows it, the only light there is to follow. Clumps of snow stick to her hair, get caught in her eyelashes, melt on her bare shoulders. Her toes and fingers go numb, the tip of her nose, tops of her ears. She keeps walking down the steep incline of the hill, letting gravity pull her so that she’s half-tripping, half-running. Eventually she slips, falls on her back, skids a whole foot and comes to a stop. Condensation billows out with each ragged breath. The stars glimmer above her. She lets herself pretend like she’s back in that moment, her best moment, before she asked her stupid question and got his stupid answer. If she waits long enough, she thinks, the snow will bury her, freeze her in time, so she never has to move on. Never has to break and never has to heal. 

She doesn’t know how long she lies there before she’s aware of crunching footsteps behind her, arms sweeping her up at the knees and back, cradling her, turning her back around the way she came. She tucks her face under his chin, shivers in the warmth of his arms. Then she’s back inside, warm yellow glow of the cabin. No more moon to follow. No more stars. He sets her back on her feet in the small foyer under the loft. Her ears ache as they thaw. Bits of gravel dig into her feet.

She clutches his hoodie. He’s big, and warm, and right: he is her entire world. He lifts her chin and kisses her. She tastes his tears in her mouth. She can read his love for her in this kiss, which makes it different than the others, more intense, like before he’d been reserved, only showed her a fraction of his real feelings. She kisses him and kisses him until she can’t breathe, until she pulls away and gulps in air and says, “You’re wrong. I do love you for who you are. And Octavia might hate me, and I might go away to college, and it might take years to come back to you, but I will. No matter what, I’ll always come back to you.”

“Clarke —”

_ “No.” _

His nose and cheeks are red, his eyes wide. Scared. He looks like a child. And even though she’s younger than him, she sees now how young he is too. Twenty-five. Just a boy. Who will he become?

He pulls her close, kisses her head, whispers, “Baby.”

The word takes all the tension out of her. One stupid word. One word that explains their entire relationship, everything wrong and right about it. 

“Can we go to bed?” she asks. “And just — pretend? Pretend it’s all okay for a little bit longer, and deal with everything else tomorrow?”

She follows him up to the loft and kisses her into the mattress, takes off her wet clothes. He brings her off quickly with his mouth and hand, enters her, fucks her slowly, but it's different now. She feels disconnected from it, like it’s happening to someone else. She should be enjoying it, but she can’t; she grits her teeth and feels the sting in her eyes. She knows this is the last time. The last time he'll be inside of her. His body under her palms. Her legs wrapped around his waist.  _ Baby  _ spoken  into her skin.  _ I love you, I love you.  _ Moonlight shining in the window. 

After, they lie together, Bellamy at her back. He holds her, traces his fingers over her body. They’re silent. There’s nothing more to say. 

She watches the clock tick over to midnight.

 

* * *

“Bet she came home early,” Clarke says, staring at the text notification on her phone. Octavia Blake, 2 New Messages.

They’re in the truck, halfway home from the cabin. The drive has been quiet, no talking, no music. They’ve only spoken a handful of words to each other all morning. Bellamy’s phone chimes next, and that’s when she knows. That’s when she knows it’s over. 

She forces herself to check the text. It’s a picture of her underwear. The underwear she left in Bellamy’s bedroom last month.  _ I got home and you guys werent here so I went into Bellamys room and found these? Why is your dirty underwear in my brothers room? _

Before Clarke can answer, another text comes in, this time a screencap of a map, a little red pin in it of their location. Then:  _ Oh my god. Why are you both in the middle of fucking nowhere together?? _

Location services. Of course they forgot to turn off location services. But maybe after years of having it on, turning it off would have damned them more. 

It doesn’t matter. It’s happening. It’s finally happening, and Clarke can’t feel anything.

_ Im freaking out,  _ Octavia says. _ Pls tell me this doesnt mean what I think it means _

“She knows,” Clarke says.

Bellamy pales a little, jaw clenching, and nods.

_ We’ll talk when we get home,  _ Clarke replies.


	12. Chapter 12

At home, Clarke and Bellamy find Octavia curled up on the couch, throw pillow clutched to her chest. Her face is red and puffy like she’s been crying. Clarke has now seen both Blakes cry in one day, the first time in her whole life, and it’s all her fault. 

“Tell me it’s not true,” Octavia says. 

Bellamy hasn’t even set down his duffel bag. His keys are clutched in his fist.

In their silence, their confirmation, something shatters in Octavia, no physical discernible thing, but behind her eyes. Her trust in both of them. The ground under her feet.

“I knew it,” she says. “I mean I didn’t  _ know  _ it, but I knew it. I could — could see, what was going on between you. The way you looked at each other. Sneaking around. Acting weird. And when Bellamy didn’t throw a fucking fit about me going to Cleveland — I wondered, but I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. And you made me know. And now I can’t unknow.”

Bellamy drops his duffel by the couch, tosses his keys in the bowl by the door. “I’m sorry, O.”

“How long?” she asks.

“September,” Clarke says. 

“Before Finn?”

“Before, then again after. Not during.”

“So you lied to me.” Octavia stands from the couch, takes a step toward her. Clarke has never been afraid of Octavia, but she suddenly wants to hide behind Bellamy. “You both lied to me.”

“We didn’t want to hurt you,” Bellamy says, and Clarke glares at him from the corner of her eye. What a stupid thing to say.

“You didn’t want to  _ hurt  _ me? So you just did it all behind my back thinking it wouldn’t  _ hurt  _ me? Maybe if you didn’t want to  _ hurt  _ me, you shouldn’t have done it in the first place. Maybe you should have shown some restraint, you fucking pedophile.”

“Hey,” Bellamy snaps. “Don’t call me that.”

“We’re kids, Bellamy. You’re a grown-ass man. Clarke is like a sister to you. She was your student. It’s sick. What you’ve done is sick.”

“It’s not like that,” Clarke says. “I pursued him.”

Octavia laughs, and it’s more frightening than her tears. “You think that makes it okay?”

Clarke has nothing to say to that. She did think it mattered, that she was the assertive one, the pursuer rather than the pursued, but after everything Bellamy told her last night, she’s not sure. 

“What hurts most is that it’s always been the three of us,” Octavia says. “Together. Always. We’ve always been honest. Never hid anything. Never lied. That’s our one rule. And — you both know. You both know how I — about sex. For years, I’ve felt so left out of everything. Everything. Like something’s wrong with me. Something’s broken in me. And you’re — you’re fucking each other. It’s like you’re laughing in my face, like, look what we can do that you can’t. Look what we have that you’ll never understand.” 

Bellamy takes a step between Clarke and Octavia. Clarke isn’t sure which one of them he’s protecting. “Octavia.” He never says her whole name unless he’s mad at her. “It’s not like that, okay?”

Octavia ignores him, moves around him to point at Clarke and say, “You’d do anything to be one of us, wouldn’t you? But you can’t fuck your way into this family, Clarke. You’ll never be one of us. At the end of the night you still have to go home to your empty castle, and you always will. You always get everything you want, but you can’t have this. You can’t take my brother.”

Clarke is too stunned to cry. “That’s not —” she begins. She wants to say  _ true,  _ but it is. It is true. And this entire time, Octavia has known. 

“Don’t talk to Clarke like that,” Bellamy says. 

“Of  _ course  _ you defend her.” Octavia shoves at his chest to no avail. He doesn’t budge. She tries again, harder this time, and he only takes her wrists in his hands and pulls her into his arms, where she presses her face against his chest and cries. Octavia used to throw temper tantrums when they were kids. They always made Clarke uncomfortable, because they were unpredictable and irrational. One minute she would be fine, and the next she would be screaming and throwing things. Once it started happening at school, she was labeled a “behavioral issues” kid and put into a special class. It runs in the family, Clarke thinks: Bellamy’s fighting, Octavia’s tantrums. Whenever it happened, Bellamy would pick her up and set her on his lap, cross her arms over her chest and hold her down, chin over her shoulder, humming a song and rocking her lightly. He never got mad, never yelled at her, never told her to calm down. Just held her until it went away. 

Octavia grew out of her tantrums. Even now, she’s upset, but she’s not untethered. Bellamy is holding her anyway, the way he used to, close to his heart, as if, in proximity to hers, it can calm her. 

He glances at Clarke, as if to say, this is it. This is the fall. 

“I want her gone,” Octavia says, muffled into his chest. “Get her  _ out  _ of here.”

“O —” Bellamy starts.

She pushes away from him. “Get her the fuck out!”

He opens his mouth to say something, but Clarke interrupts him: “It’s okay. I’ll go.” She turns to leave, but then pauses, and adds, “I know it’s not enough but, I’m sorry, Octavia.”

Octavia’s only response is to burrow back into her brother’s arms. With one last look to Bellamy, Clarke leaves.

 

* * *

Two days pass. No texts, no calls. Clarke doesn’t leave her house. She draws more than she has in months combined. She writes out long texts to Octavia, apologizing, rationalizing, but she deletes all of them. She doesn’t cry. For once, she doesn’t cry.

Bellamy texts her once:  _ Are you okay? _

She stares at the message wondering if it’s some kind of trick. If Octavia has his phone. If she’s dreaming, or hallucinating, or if it’s a secret code. It seems ridiculous of him to ask how she’s doing. 

_ Fine,  _ she ends up replying about five minutes later, so as not to seem like she was waiting by her phone, even though she’s always waiting by her phone. She usually prides herself on the punctuality of her replies.  _ You? _

_ Been better _

She sends the slanty-face emoji, then types out  _ I still love you,  _ but never hits send. Neither does she delete it. Instead she lets it hover, unspoken.

On the second night, Abby knocks on her bedroom door and asks why she’s there. Clarke tells her no reason, keeps drawing. Abby goes to shut the door, but stops. Instead, she comes into the room and sits on Clarke’s bed. 

“What’s wrong?” she asks, darting her eyes around, hands clasped between her knees like she’s nervous. 

“Nothing.”

“You haven’t spent an entire day at home for fifteen years.”

Clarke smears some charcoal with the side of her pinky finger. “Don’t feel like going out.”

Abby stays still and quiet. A minute passes. Two. 

Somehow Abby’s scrutiny makes it worse. Clarke can’t detach herself when she’s being watched. She blinks and a drop falls onto the page, slides down like a stream, dragging charcoal with it. 

The words come out a choked rasp: “I’m sorry.” She shakes her head, drops the charcoal. “I’m so sorry.”

Abby moves up on the bed and holds her, rocks her back and forth. When was the last time this happened? It feels as alien to her as it does familiar, a comfort so bone-deep it’s too far away even to feel nostalgic, like she’s meeting part of her own body for the first time.

She tells Abby all of it. Everything. How she knocked on Bellamy’s door in September asking to teach her how to kiss. Finn being a dick at homecoming. Finn cheating on her. Bellamy being a dick about Finn. The football game. Detention. Sneaking around these past two months. The cabin. The only part she leaves out is Bellamy’s story about Gina, because it’s not her story to tell. She cries the hardest when she admits that she loves him and he doesn’t love her the same way, which isn’t entirely true, but how else can she explain it? She cries so hard she can’t speak, can’t breathe, and they have to sit in silence, Abby smoothing down her hair, rubbing her shoulder, shushing her and telling her it’s alright. 

“I know it's all my fault,” Clarke says when she finds her voice again. “I just don’t know what to do.”

Abby doesn’t seem to pass any judgment, but for once she’s not apathetic, either. She doesn’t get up and say they’ll talk about it in the morning knowing they never will. It’s another little step toward fixing what’s broken between them, if such a thing is possible. 

“I don’t either,” Abby admits. “But I’m sorry this happened to you.”

“It didn’t happen to me. I made it happen.”

“It can be both. Sometimes you have to accept that you’ve done bad things, and bad things have been done to you.”

Clarke shakes her head. “I don’t want to. I want things to go back to the way they were.”

“I know.” And she doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t tell her things will get better, doesn’t admit that her life will never be the same.

 

* * *

Bellamy comes over on the third day, the afternoon before school starts back up again. It won’t stop snowing, up to six inches now. He doesn’t give her any notice, just rings the doorbell. Abby is at a school board meeting to help reassess snow day policy. Clarke opens the door. Bellamy looks worse than she’s ever seen him — a pallor over his face, eyes sad, like when he’s trying to get over a cold by completely ignoring it, refusing to rest until Octavia has to sit on him to keep him from tackling the next item on his to-do list. Despite this, Clarke is still so happy to see him she beams, curls her toes in the carpet to keep from jumping into his arms. Clumps of snowflakes are caught in his hair. She invites him in and asks if he wants something to drink. He says no thanks, blandly. They sit on the couch. She finds it difficult to stay away from him when all she wants is to reach out and take his hand, kiss him, tell him she loves him no matter what. Ask him again if he loves her, just to hear him say it.  

He hasn’t bothered taking off his shoes or jacket. A short visit, then.

“I have some bad news,” he says. The eyebrow wrinkle. He keeps his eyes trained on the fan of  _ Women’s Health  _ and  _ Home & Garden  _ magazines on the coffee table, which the housekeeper puts out every month but nobody reads. 

She knows what he’s about to say. He’s going to tell her that they can’t see each other anymore. That Octavia doesn’t want anything to do with her. That their relationship is over.

“Mom is dying.”

“What?”

“She had a cancer screening last week. They found a cyst. Did a biopsy. All of that is pretty routine. But then it came back positive. Stage four now. They’re giving her about six months, maybe a year.”

“Oh, my god.”

“Yeah.”

“How long have you known?”

“A day. I knew about the biopsy before we left, but she has biopsies all the time. I didn’t even think to worry. The results came back yesterday morning.”

They fall silent, because what can you say to that? Suddenly their relationship drama seems so petty. Absurd. It’s another pinhole moment. Every time the hole gets wider, she sees more of the picture, and it’s nothing like she thought it was. 

“Clarke,” he begins, starts and then stops again, like he can’t decide how to say what he needs to say. “We’ve considered you family for a long time. But now — O and I talked about it, and we think it might be best if you didn’t come around for a while. Until the end. We want to spend as much time with Mom as possible.”

“Okay.”

Another silence. She stares at his hands, resting on his knees. Hands she has drawn. Hands that have touched every inch of her skin. His fingers, inside her. 

“Can I talk to Octavia?” she asks.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“She needs someone right now.”

“I know. But that person isn’t you.”

“What about you?” she asks. “What do you need?”

He presses his thumb and forefinger to his closed eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose. “I know what you’re really asking and — no, Clarke. We can’t keep doing this. O is beside herself. I knew she would be hurt, but I didn’t know it would be this bad. I didn’t know it would make her rethink her entire identity.” 

“Has she forgiven you?”

“No. And she won’t. She might pretend, play nice for Mom, who doesn’t know anything about this thankfully, but inside — the relationship I used to have with her, the trust — it’s gone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say that.”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know. Anything but sorry. I’m going to be hearing it nonstop for the next year.”

She rests her hand on top of his. He looks at it but doesn’t move. 

“Let me take care of you for once,” she says. 

“We can’t, Clarke.”

She takes his hand and puts it on her cheek, turns her head slightly and kisses his palm. “Why not? Where do you have to be?”

“I have to pick up Mom from chemo in twenty minutes.”

“So we have twenty minutes.”

She lets go of his hand and he keeps it there, cupping her face, running his thumb across her cheekbone.

His eyes fall to her lips. “To do what?”

She guides him upstairs to her room, where she pushes his jacket off but doesn’t make him take off his shoes, sits him on the bed. She stands between his knees, lifts his chin, presses her lips to his. He doesn’t kiss back at first, turns his head away, looking pained. She takes his chin and tilts it back toward her, kisses him again, harder. His mouth is still slack. She can feel him want to resist. 

Then, finally, he breaks. Pulls her closer, fingers in her hair, quiet moan of relief in his throat. He runs his palms up the back of her shirt, skin to skin. It feels so right to be kissing Bellamy, so wrong to betray Octavia. Abby is right — sometimes there is no solution.

“Let me hold you,” she says.

He gives a slight nod. They lie down. He tucks his head under her chin, wraps his arms around her waist; their legs tangle together. She combs her fingers through his hair, kisses the top of his head. 

“I love you,” she says.

“I love you too.”

She’s surprised he doesn’t try to fight her on it. Doesn’t tell her not to say things like that right now, not to make this harder than it has to be. Maybe for once he knows he needs to be loved. Knows he needs to be loved by her.  

“I’m going to marry you one day,” she says.

He lifts his head and gives her a look she thinks is a glare at first, but it’s not. It’s something else, a flicker of strange recognition. “Do you remember when you used to say that to me?”

“That I’m going to marry you?”

“Yeah. You started saying it when you were a kid. And when I asked why, you said, ‘You’re the only boy I know.’”

“I don’t remember that.”

“It was like, a two-week thing maybe. Then I told you that you could fall in love with girls too, and you went ‘Ohh’ and never said it again. It’s just weird, hearing you say it in the exact same way but a decade later, in a completely different context.”

“Little-kid me was right, though. I’m going to marry you,” she repeats, more insistently.

“Clarke,” he says, like he doesn’t want to fight about it, but he doesn’t want to hear it, either.

“It’s okay. I don’t need you to believe it. I just need you to know it.”

He gives up, lets out a long breath and closes his eyes. She traces the bridge of his nose with her fingertip, his eyebrow, the scar over his lip, his cheekbone, the outline of where the bruise used to be from when Finn punched him. She leans in and kisses his forehead, his eyelid, his cheek, his lips. There she lingers, peppering small kisses until he starts returning them, until it deepens into something solemn. In it, she puts every  _ I’m sorry  _ he won’t let her say, knowing it will be their last.

 

* * *

She opens the door for him, gets hit with a blast of cold. He turns his collar up and steps outside. 

“Is this goodbye?” she asks. 

“For now,” he says. 

The warmth of a moment ago has flown out the door. He doesn’t kiss her. Doesn’t call her baby or tell her he loves her. Doesn’t give any indication when they might see each other again. He just leaves.

 

* * *

Upstairs, she lies in the space he had just occupied, only the ghost of his presence remaining. She presses her face into the pillow where his head had lain, and cries until she falls asleep.

 

* * *

The next morning, Clarke gets to school an hour early for the first time in her life. Alone. It feels weird, walking down the empty hallways in the dark morning, classrooms lit, early-arriving teachers sitting hunched over their desks, preparing for the day.

She goes straight to the front office. First, she buys a parking pass for the second half of the year. It’s fifty dollars, which seems ridiculous, but the administrative assistant offers to call her mom about it, and tells Clarke she can pick up the pass at the end of the day. 

Next, she asks to see Mr. Kane, who comes out to the little waiting area and leads her into his office. Last time she spoke with him, she was planning her senior-year schedule, and it was such a short, efficient meeting in which he seemed so frazzled and overburdened that she wasn’t sure he could differentiate her from any other student in the school. His office smells like incense. A macramé potted plant hangs in the corner beside a poster that says YOU ARE VALID AND LOVED with a kitten, puppy, and bunny on it, faded into pastel from sunlight. Several stands on his desk offer a variety of pamphlets on everything from divorced parents to abortion. 

“Ms. Griffin,” he says, sitting down on the yoga ball chair behind his desk and putting on his glasses, which are hanging on a purple beaded chain around his neck. “What can I help you with today?”

“I want to drop my history class.”

He looks surprised, but there’s something else behind his eyes too, some flicker of knowing. “Does this have anything to do with Mr. Blake?”

“No,” she says firmly. “He’s not even here anymore.”

The door is still open a crack. He glances at it, leans forward, and says quietly, “You can tell me, Clarke. I’m not here to get anyone in trouble.”

“I know.”

“I’ve known Mr. Blake a long time, when he was a student here, even. He’s a good man, but he doesn’t always make the best choices. If he did or said something to you, we can —” 

“Please,” she interrupts. He has no idea. No idea. Her chin is wobbling. She clenches her teeth together to keep the tears back.  _ Quit being such a crybaby.  _ She forces a deep inhale. She can’t be in that classroom anymore. Can’t face Diyoza at the front of  _ his  _ room, sitting behind  _ his  _ desk, collecting tests at  _ his  _ table, teaching  _ his  _ material. “I want to take art instead. Advanced drawing.” 

Mr. Kane stares at her for a long second, doubtful as if assessing whether to keep pressing the issue, then settles into resignation. He flips a page in her file and scans it quickly. “It looks like your ACTs last year were high enough you don’t need an additional humanities credit, so you’re covered there. But —” He flips another page. “I don’t think you’ve taken Intro to Art yet. That’s a prerequisite.”

She’d been anticipating this. Her sketchbook is already in her lap, clutched tightly in her hands. She’s never shown it to anyone before. “Would it be possible to get approval from the art teacher? If I’m self-taught already?” She passes the sketchbook to him, open to a charcoal landscape of the waterfall she and Bellamy had seen in the woods. 

Mr. Kane inspects it. 

“You can look through it,” she offers, so he does. She has a lot of nature drawings, some attempts at anatomy, and a number of portraits too, but she tore out all the Bellamy pages. 

“These are lovely, Clarke, really,” he says, closing the book and handing it back. “You’ll need to get approval from Mrs. Williams, but I have a feeling she’ll say yes. On your lunch, I want you to go ahead and take this slip to her classroom and have her sign it.” He jots something on a piece of paper and passes it over.

“Thank you.” She feels hopeful for the first time in days. She puts the slip of paper in her sketchbook, and the sketchbook in her backpack.

“While I have you,” he says, “how are your applications going?”

She admits they’re not, that she hasn’t had the time or energy to think about college. He asks what she might want to major in, and she says she doesn’t know. 

“What about art?” he asks, which seems ridiculous. A high school art class is one thing, but an entire degree? What would she do with it? “You seem to have a lot of talent. You have the grades, test scores, and portfolio to get into a good art school. A few deadlines have passed, but I can pull some strings for you. You won’t be able to get a scholarship or anything, but you might be able to swing a fall acceptance or two.”

It’s better than staying in town and going to community college here, she thinks, which is what a lot of people do who don’t know where else to go. And it’s better than pre-med somewhere else, following in her mom’s footsteps just because she knows Abby would foot the bill for med school and offer her a job at the practice after graduation. 

But she really hates the sight of blood, and medicine isn’t a topic that makes her excited. The thought of art school — that makes her excited. Like,  _ really _ excited, even if she can’t do anything with it. Why not? What’s stopping her? She could get out of Arcadia for a while, learn to get better at something she already loves. 

“Okay,” she says. 

He pulls a drawer open and thumbs through some files, takes out a few brochures and shows them to her. Savannah College of Art and Design, California Institute of the Arts, Rhode Island School of Design. It’s already overwhelming.

“You’ll have to hurry, but I think you’ll be able to put something together for an extended deadline. There might be a few late fees involved.”

“That’s fine,” she says, taking the stack of brochures and stuffing them in her bag. The homeroom warning bell rings. She stands up and shoulders her backpack. “I’ll keep you updated. Thanks, Mr. Kane.”

“Any time.”

She takes a step toward the door and he says, with more intensity than it should warrant, “If you have any problems with anything, or anyone, my door is always open.”

 

* * *

She gets to lunch late because she stopped in the art room to get Mrs. Williams’ signature, which was given with extreme enthusiasm, several mentions of “I’m  _ so  _ excited to have you in class” and four accidental thumbprint pastel smudges on the slip. Clarke is riding high on the thought of learning about art from someone other than herself and YouTube tutorials, until she gets to the cafeteria and sees her friends at their usual table, Octavia among them smiling and talking to Harper and Monty, Jasper’s arm around the back of her chair. Clarke would bet money no one knows about Aurora’s prognosis — Octavia has never shown her shadows to anyone but family. Always so precise about the exact image she portrays, in total control of what everyone thinks of her. Clarke didn’t really notice it until now, never let herself see Octavia as someone separate from her, someone just as flawed and scared and insecure as everyone else. 

Clarke backs out of the cafeteria before anyone can spot her. She pushes into a bathroom and locks herself in a stall with her paper-bag lunch clutched in her sweaty grip.

She pulls out her phone and texts Murphy,  _ Where are you? _

Thankfully he replies right away:  _ Shop _

So she leaves the bathroom and keeps her head down while she rushes down the hall, all the way to the south end of the school. She’s never been to shop class before. When she enters, Murphy is sitting on a stool in front of a workbench, playing a game on his phone. The room looks like a really big garage, complete with docking-bay doors. It’s nearly freezing, empty except for the shop teacher, Roan, who is sitting at his desk with a welding mask over his face, staring what might be forlornly at a stack of scantrons on his desk.

“What’s up?” Murphy asks when she sits down on a stool beside him. It rocks back and forth, uneven against the cement floor. 

“Nothing. Can’t I have lunch with my friend?” She starts pulling food from her bag, putting some in front of him and some in front of her.

He eats a grape. She can feel his stare on her. 

“What happened?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“Whatever it is got you shook.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Alright, whatever,” he says, as if he doesn’t care anyway.

“Do you spend your lunch here every day?”

“Yep.”

“And Roan doesn’t mind that you’re just...in here?”

They both look at Roan, who has lifted the visor of the welding mask and appears to be folding an intricate paper airplane out of a student’s scantron. He’s not wearing any shoes, just socks that come up to his calves, and a pair of cargo shorts, even though it’s January.

“Nope,” Murphy says.

 

* * *

Mid-February, Clarke gets a friend request on Facebook from Raven Reyes, on her real account. She accepts it, and shortly after, Raven sends her a message.

_ Hi Clarke. I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Finn’s (ex) girlfriend from PA. I meant to reach out sooner but time got away from me. I heard about what happened, and I was just wondering if you’re ok. Sorry if this is weird,  _ followed by the teeth-gritting emoji. 

It takes Clarke a moment to realize Raven means Finn and not Bellamy. She nearly forgot about Finn, even though it seemed like such a huge thing at the time. 

_ Not weird!  _ she replies. _ I’m glad to hear from you actually. I’m fine and I hope you’re okay too _

_ Yeah I’m ok now,  _ Raven says.

The “now” is worrisome. Clare hesitates, thumbs poised over her phone, then decides to go for it.  _ Would you maybe want to meet up sometime? I have a car. I could come to PA _

_ You’d be willing to do that? _

_ Yeah definitely. I feel like we probably have a lot to talk about _

_ You don’t hate me? _

_ Of course I don’t hate you lol. Do you hate me? _

_ No not at all _

_ So we can grab dinner this weekend maybe? _

_ I’d love that _

They make plans for the coming Saturday. 

Pittsburgh is about a three-hour drive that Clarke intends to make in two and a half hours because she speeds, something that always bothered Bellamy and one of the many reasons he insists on driving everywhere. Also, she realizes now that she’s gotten some distance from him, he’s kind of a control freak. He gets grumpy when things aren’t done exactly the way he wants them, and he always thinks his way is the best way. But he also happens to be right about a lot of things.

Once, when she was fifteen and he was teaching her how to drive, he told her to slow down, and she had said, stupidly, “How much does a speeding ticket cost?”

“Couple hundred bucks.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

She remembers he looked out the window as he said it, arms across his chest. At the time she thought he was just being grouchy because she was speeding, but in retrospect she sees it as something else. Annoyance. Exhaustion. Resentment. 

“So it’s not a big deal,” Clarke said. 

“Not for people like you.”

Now, going eighty-five down I-71, it hits her: to Clarke, two hundred dollars is just a number to hand off to her mother. Two hundred dollars is nothing to her, because she doesn’t have her own money, doesn’t work for the money she has, and will probably never have to. 

She taps the break and shifts into the middle lane, sets the cruise at seventy-five.

 

* * *

Raven is waiting in a booth when Clarke arrives. They chose a Denny’s right off the highway. Raven hasn’t yet noticed her, so Clarke takes a moment to stare. In pictures, she’s always smiling, looks a bit like the manifestation of a beam of sunshine, but alone, in person, Clarke can see the weary fragility of her. She sits straight-backed with her head tilted down, fidgets constantly. In the few seconds Clarke watches her, she checks her phone three times. She smooths down her tight ponytail. Her lips form a worried line. She’s wearing a long-sleeved Steelers shirt. Her eyes are deep-set and when she’s not smiling for a photo she looks sad and tired. A water glass is half-empty by her menu. She checks her phone again.

Clarke comes over and says, “Hey.”

Raven looks up, smiles — clouds instantly parting, beam of sunshine once more — and stands up to hug her. They hold each other for a beat too long for strangers just meeting, but it’s the kind of hug only two women can give each other when hurt by the same man. 

“It’s so good to meet you,” Raven says, a pleasantry, but Clarke believes it.

“You too.”

When she pulls away, she notices the brace on Raven’s knee, and a cane hanging off the side of the table.

She sits down and opens the menu out of nervousness, but she can’t really pay attention to any of the words. It’ll get easier, she thinks, but for right now, she’s not sure how to handle this. Clarke was the other woman. Clarke didn’t reach out to Raven to warn her about Finn or see if she was okay; she honestly kind of forgot about her in all the other drama. But Raven didn’t forget about Clarke. 

“I don’t really know how to navigate this situation,” Raven says with a nervous laugh.

“Neither do I,” Clarke replies, relieved to call out the awkwardness for what it is. “First — I think I should apologize.”

“You don’t have to.”

“No, I do, because even after I found out you and Finn were together, I was still going to sleep with him. I didn’t, though. And after, I didn’t reach out to you or — I should have checked on you, or warned you, or let you know what was happening.”

“I was a stranger to you. You had no reason to do that.”

“Basic human decency.”

“It’s over now, right?” 

“Still, I’m sorry.”

Raven offers a small smile. “You’re forgiven.”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. He ran away.”

“He ran away?”

“After he turned eighteen. Just up and left. No one has heard from him. Someone mentioned Secaucus, but another person said Philly, so I don’t know.”

The server comes by with a water for Clarke. Raven orders a Moons Over My Hammy and Clarke says she’ll have the same. 

When the server leaves, Clarke asks, “How long were you two together?”

“Five years. We started dating when we were both thirteen, but we were best friends before that. We grew up in the same apartment complex. Across the hall from each other actually. My dad was never home and my mom was always drunk, so I spent a lot of time over at his place. He lived with his mom. His dad lives in Arcadia, which is why he moved there after he got expelled.”

“For dealing coke.”

She nods sadly, sighs. “Yep. What about you? I mean, your relationship with him.”

“He was the cute new kid. We went to homecoming together. He asked me out in October and I said yes.”

A flicker of pain crosses Raven’s face, but she covers it up by taking a sip of water. “So he pursued you.”

“Yeah.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”

Clarke folds down a corner of the paper placemat. In the booth behind them, a man lets out a loud, rasping laugh that turns into a coughing fit. The TV behind Raven’s head is playing a football game. 

“I have a personal question,” Clarke asks.

“Shoot.”

“Your leg. Did Finn do that to you?”

Raven barks out a laugh, which startles Clarke. She covers her mouth and says, “No. He never — it was an accident.”

Something about the way she says it feels off. “You can tell me. He hurt me too.”

“It was an accident,” she repeats. “I mean, he was  _ there _ but it wasn’t his fault.”

Abby sitting in silence was really effective in getting Clarke to open up about Bellamy. So Clarke clasps her hands together on the table and waits, looks at Raven blankly, without judgment, watches her check her phone, shift in her seat, swallow, check her phone again, straighten her roll of silverware. 

“Honestly, I don’t really remember,” she says finally. “We lived on the third floor. We were fourteen, coming home from a gas station run for candy, which we stole, and on the way home we got into a fight about something stupid. I wanted to watch a movie we hadn’t seen before, and he wanted to watch something else.  _ Predator,  _ I think, which we’d seen a hundred times. And it wasn’t a big deal at all, but — we always watched what he wanted to watch. Always. For a long time I liked that I never had to make any decisions around him, you know? That he did all the work, chose what we ate, where we went, what we did. It was nice, not to have to think and decide things. And, like, how fucked-up is that? What world do we live in that teaches teenage girls to want to be relieved of the burden of choice? So, any time I actually did want something, I wasn’t allowed. I was never allowed to say no to him about anything. Well, no, that’s not true. Like, sure, I could have said no, but it always came at a cost. At best, the silent treatment. At worst, a temper tantrum that sometimes ended in, you know, throwing shit, or shoving me around, or —” She stops abruptly. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be —”

“It’s okay,” Clarke says. 

“It’s just — really hard to talk about, you know?”

“I know. Take your time. I don’t have anywhere to be.”

In the silence that ensues, the server comes with their food. Raven eats a few fries while Clarke waits for it to cool down. 

“So, I don’t know,” Raven continues, “I was probably on my period or something, but I wasn’t letting it go. I wanted to watch this movie. I remember now. It was  _ Casablanca.  _ He said it sounded boring. I told him it was supposed to be one of the best movies ever made. I cited all these things I’d read about it. But this was one of those fights where he just wasn’t listening, completely ignoring me like I wasn’t talking at all, and I let myself get so upset, and I slipped on the stairs, and fucked up my knee, and —”

“You slipped.”

She nods. “I slipped.”

“You slipped,” Clarke repeats.

Raven tears off a piece of crust from her sandwich and eats it. She stares with extreme concentration at a point on the table. “I think so? His hands were in his pockets. He wasn’t yelling or lashing out or anything. It’s possible he hip-checked me, maybe. Stopped short or something. I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“What did he do then?”

“He looked at me from the top of the stairs and told me to get up. To quit being so dramatic. I remember that part really clearly. And I was crying, and I couldn’t move. I’d hit my head so hard I could barely see. And when he finally realized what was wrong, I remember — he sighed. And I felt so bad for inconveniencing him, for ruining movie night. He finally came down the stairs and tried to get me up, but I screamed, and then one of our neighbors came out, a retired paramedic, and told me to stay where I was. She called 911. I was in the hospital for a week, and I’m still in physical therapy to this day.”

“Jesus.”

“I know. I know I should have broken up with him sooner. Actually, no, I never broke up with him. He ran away before I could. And now that he’s gone, I’m so much happier. So much less afraid. I look back and think, why? Why did I stay with him so long when he was so terrible to me? It’s just. I’ve known him all my life. I felt like he was the only person who could really see me, you know? Who wanted to see me. And I thought — it sounds ridiculous now, but I thought no one would ever love me as well as he could. But that’s just not true. There’s a whole world out there full of people who might love me better.”

Raven’s words slam into Clarke’s gut. Bellamy was right. She only loves him because he’s the only person who could really see her, but there are other people out there. She has her entire life ahead of her to meet new people, to go new places, to love and be loved. She can find a sense of belonging outside the shelter of Bellamy’s arms. She can accept her value as a person without Bellamy affirming it with his attention. 

“Yeah,” Clarke says, picking up her sandwich, “a whole world.”


	13. Chapter 13

Some days she wakes up hating him. He did this to her. He took her fragile heart and mishandled it. Yeah, she went after him, but she didn’t know any better. He knew better. He should have said no. He should have pushed her away.

But other days, most days, she just misses him. Misses Octavia. Misses her family and their strange little life and daily routines and closeness. She misses punching in the garage door code, eager to see if his truck is inside. Misses watching him play video games. Misses Octavia’s banal text messages throughout the day. Misses the busyness of the bungalow, everyone coming and going with barely overlapping schedules, a TV always blaring. Misses Octavia and Bellamy bickering across the house. Misses arguing about what to have for dinner, who has to clean up after, what’s for dessert. 

She has a ton of stuff still at the Blakes’ house. She’s been putting off going there, not knowing anyone’s schedule anymore, if Aurora is still working, if Bellamy picked up hours at the shop. She tells herself she’ll stop by, run in, grab a few things, and leave before anyone notices, but she always chickens out. It never seems like a good time. 

On a Thursday in mid-March, she goes on a drive after school with Murphy. They go on drives now, sometimes. They park and put the seats back and stare out Clarke’s moonroof. Murphy is always eager to share his music with her. He makes her mixes on actual CDs and numbers them, a new one every week. They’re listening to number seven now, and it’s an eclectic mix of the White Stripes, Fiona Apple, Cat Power, the Black Keys, Lauryn Hill, Mazzy Star, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Willie Nelson. Sometimes she thinks it’s the only thing keeping her going, knowing next week she’ll have a new mix to listen to. 

Murphy comes over after school sometimes too. Clarke enjoys the company. They watch cartoons. Eat junk food. Go on walks. He’s not outwardly affectionate, not like Octavia anyway, but he shows that he cares in other ways. He tells her a little about Emori, then a little more, and a little more, and now he rarely shuts up about her. Roan teaches him how to fold intricate paper airplanes in shop class; after school, Murphy shows them to Clarke and they throw them down empty hallways. He screencaps memes he thinks she’ll like and sends them to her in the morning because he knows that’s the worst time of day for her. Sometimes she even gets a  _ Good morning  _ text _.  _ He has never once used an emoji, so all of his texts sound sarcastic.

There are rumors, of course. There are always rumors. The princess and the cockroach. Clarke doesn’t care. It all seems so petty now. She’d choose a single John Murphy over a thousand of her classmates. 

“You can tell me, you know,” Murphy says.

“Tell you what?” she asks. She turns into the Walmart parking lot, drives all the way to the back where there’s a decent view of a frozen cemetery pond and the sun setting behind it. It’s still too cold to walk around, but the days are getting longer now. 

“Why you stopped hanging out with your old friends. Why you don’t talk to Octavia anymore. Why you’re hanging out with me. I’m not, like, smart or anything, and I won’t be able to give you advice and whatever, but I can listen.”

She parks the car, sips the large cherry Icee they got from Burger King which they’re splitting along with two Junior Whoppers and a large fry. They’ve become rapidly platonically intimate in a way Clarke hasn’t felt with anyone besides Octavia. She didn’t think she could achieve this level of relaxation with someone again so easily. Then again, maybe she just picked up her love for Octavia and dropped it onto Murphy. Like a best-friend rebound.

“It’s not a story worth telling,” she says.

The next song starts up. She doesn’t recognize it, but it’s slow and sad. 

“You’re different now. You used to be all, like, bubbly. But also kind of mean. Intimidating. Now you’re just — I don’t know. You’re not like that anymore. I figure something happened.”

“You promise not to tell anyone?”

“I’m definitely going to tell Emori. But other than that, yes.”

“Is she going to tell anyone?”

“She lives a whole state away. No one she knows will care.”

Clarke sighs. “Okay. I fucked Bellamy Blake.”

“I  _ knew  _ it.”

She looks out the side window toward the loading docks. “Shut up.”

“Come on, don’t be like that. I’m just saying, like — you guys weren’t that subtle.” 

“I know.”

“Sorry. You can tell me what happened. I’ll take it seriously.”

“You don’t take anything seriously.”

“Well, I’ll try.”

So she tells him the whole story. It takes nearly four songs to get through. She keeps thinking she’s going to get choked up while she’s telling it, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t feel anything. It’s just a thing that happened, and now her life is exactly what it is. She’s still filthy rich. She has a mother who isn’t dying, who is working hard to be better for her. She has Raven and Murphy. She should be grateful.

“What a  _ dick,”  _ Murphy says, which is not at all the reaction she was expecting.

“Him or me?”

“Him. Like, he sits there and tells you, ‘I can take everything away from you,’ then he  _ does.  _ Just leaves you high and dry. Abandons you. Doesn’t try to resolve it. What a fucking coward.”

She’s never seen Murphy angry. “His mom is dying.”

“So? Boo hoo. My mom’s dead too. That doesn’t absolve him of his shitty behavior.”

John Murphy just used the word  _ absolve.  _ She learns something new about him every day. 

“How would you handle it?” she asks.

“You talked to Octavia for what? Five minutes? Tops? I would sit all your asses down and work through it. You think it’s easy for Emori to be with a shit-show like me? It’s not. I fuck up all the time, and sometimes she does too, but we don’t shy away from it. She calls me out on my bullshit and I call her out on hers, and that’s how we make it work. And like, I get it, I get why it happened with you two even though it’s real fucked-up. But, like, a dude’s true character isn’t in the mistakes he makes. It’s in the way he handles them.”

“I can’t make them sit down and talk to me. I can’t force this to get better, not when their mom is so sick.”

“You can at least be angry.”

“What good will that do?”

“I don’t know. But you can be angry that he did this to you. You can be angry their mom is dying. You can be angry Octavia doesn’t understand. You don’t have to be angry  _ at  _ anyone. You can just be angry. Like, scream. Just fucking scream.”

“I’m not going to scream.”

So Murphy goes first. He clenches his hands into fists and squeezes his eyes shut, leans forward like he’s about to run into battle. It startles her, drowns out the music, and when he’s done, her ears are ringing. 

She takes a deep breath, fills her lungs with as much air as she can fit, and screams. She’s never let herself scream before. After only a second, her throat starts to ache with the strain. It’s so loud and high-pitched her own ears hurt with it. It sounds like a horror movie scream and she wonders if any of the Walmart employees can hear. Maybe they think she’s being murdered. Worse things have probably happened behind Walmart. 

She runs out of air and collapses back onto the seat. Her whole body is throbbing. Her breath heaves. Murphy looks both smug and proud. Her throat feels raw. She sips at the Icee.

“Now let’s get your stuff,” he says.

“Right now?”

“Right now. I’ll come with you.”

 

* * *

When they arrive, Bellamy’s truck is in the garage, which is already open, and a black Prius she doesn’t recognize is parked in front of the house. 

“This is a bad idea,” Clarke says, staring at the Prius, having a off-key feeling but not letting herself articulate it into a thought. Murphy is already climbing out of the car with a box in hand they got from the Walmart. 

“Dammit, Murphy.” She keys off the ignition and follows him. He’s waiting for her at the garage door, and she glares at him before pushing ahead and going inside.

Bellamy is on the couch, quickly pulling away from a woman sitting with him. His lips are redder than they should be. 

“Clarke,” he says, reaching forward and pausing the TV, what looks like a cheesy Hallmark movie. “What are you doing here?” He glances at Murphy, then back to Clarke, confused.

Clarke would have already crumbled by now, but with Murphy at her back, she manages to say, “I came to get my stuff.”

“Okay. Uh, Echo, this is Clarke and Murphy. Clarke, Murphy, this is my girlfriend, Echo.”

Clarke swallows down the knot that rises in her throat. Attempts a smile. “Nice to meet you.”

Echo nods. She’s a stern and scary woman who looks weirdly familiar. “I don’t think I had either of you.”

And that’s where Clarke recognizes her — she’s the gym teacher. “I took summer PE.”

“I was in your class, but I ducked out a lot,” Murphy says.

“Excuse us a minute,” Bellamy says to Echo, then leads Clarke into Octavia’s room. Octavia must be with her tutor. 

Behind them, she can hear Murphy fall onto the sofa and ask, “So what kind of credentials does a gym teacher need?”

Clarke puts the box on the bed and starts tossing her stuff in — the photo album her mom made her, which is still on Octavia’s desk, a pair of leggings on the floor, a phone charger. Goes to show how infrequently Octavia cleans her room. Everything is exactly where Clarke left it. 

“Move on fast, don’t you, Blake?” she asks.

“Look who’s talking. Murphy, really?”

“He’s just a friend.”

“Sure.”

“He  _ is.  _ And I need a friend right now because you took away everyone I loved.” She tosses a stuffed tiger she won at a street fair into the box. 

“So now it’s my fault.”

She looks him dead in the eye and says, “It always was.” 

“You hate me now, don’t you?”

“If I hated you it would hurt less. I just hate the situation.” She goes to Octavia’s dresser and crouches down, pulls open the bottom drawer, which is her drawer, where she keeps her weekend clothes. She returns and tosses an armful of clothes into the box with more force than necessary. “I didn’t know you’d shove your dick into the first woman to make eye contact with you.”

She expects him to get mad. She wants him to get mad. He only sighs. “I thought getting a girlfriend would make it easier.”

“How would that make it easier for me?” 

He looks at her like she's stupid. “I didn’t say for you.”

“Whatever. I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.” She goes back to the dresser to grab a second round of clothes.

“Clarke, come on. I’m trying to talk to you.”

“What have you told her about me? About us?”

“Nothing. I’ve never mentioned you.”

Somehow that hurts worse than it would if he’d indulged their relationship to her. “What are you going to tell her? That you fucked your little sister’s best friend? That you fell in love with a teenager? What will she think of you then?”

She knows she’s being petty and immature, but rage is better than tears. She just wants to hurt him.

“I haven’t told her anything. I’m not going to. It’s not her business.”

She gives up, sits on the bed, puts her head in her hands. “I can’t handle this, Bellamy. I hurt all the time. I wake up every morning and it’s like — for a second everything is okay, and then I remember I’m not going to see or speak to you all day, or the next, or the next. And if I tried, it wouldn’t be welcome. And then I remember about Aurora, and I feel guilty for being sad at all, because I’m not the one dying. I’m not the one watching her die. And I can’t do anything to help. The only thing that will help is staying away from you. You’re the only family I’ve ever had, and now you’re gone.”

She wants him to sit next to her, hold her hand, comfort her like he’s always done, every time in her life she’s been hurt. But he only stands there, arms across his chest. “I don’t know what to tell you, Clarke.”

“Tell me you love me.”

“You already know that.”

“Then say it.”

“I can’t.”

She stands abruptly and picks up the box, tucks it under her arm. Gets in his space and stares at him. “I used to think you were so brave. Strong. You’re not. You’re a fucking coward, Bellamy.”

It lands. Hard. His mouth falls open. He's speechless, devastated. Good. He deserves it.

"And I changed my mind," she says. "I do hate you."

She storms out of the room, finds finds Murphy on one end of the couch, his boots propped up on the coffee table, playing a game on his phone. Echo is gone. Maybe Murphy killed her. It’s a nice thought.

“I got everything,” Clarke says. “We can go.”

 

* * *

“So what are your prom plans?” Murphy asks.

They’re in shop at lunch, where they have lunch every day now. It’s April and still cold as balls out. Roan is at the back of the room using a circle saw on something metal. Sparks are flying everywhere and Clarke has to talk over the loud whirring.

“John Murphy, are you asking me to prom?” 

“You wish.” He plucks at a thread of orange slice. “I was gonna visit Emori that weekend and wondered if you wanted to come.”

“You want me to meet your girlfriend?”

“Yeah, I mean, you two might get along or whatever.”

“I’d love to.”

“Yeah?” He has that expression he gets when he’s happy, not quite a smile but not the doom and gloom that usually hangs over him. “You’re cool not going to prom?”

“Fuck prom.”

He nods. “Fuck prom.”

Later that day, Clarke checks the mail and finds a big envelope addressed to her. She runs inside and rips it open. It’s her an acceptance into the Columbus College of Art and Design. She was only able to apply to three schools, the deadlines of all the others having passed, but Mr. Kane came through and made sure her application was accepted at least a few places. CCAD was actually her first choice, because as much as she’s ready to leave Arcadia, she’s not sure she’s ready to leave Ohio. She takes a picture of the letter and sends it to her mom, who replies,  _ Yay!!!  _ When Clarke had first told her she wanted to go to art school, she was expecting Abby to show, at best, hesitation; at worst, apathy. Instead Clarke was met with surprise and enthusiasm, though she can’t parse out how much of it is just the “I’m trying to be a good mom now and this is how a good mom would probably reply” attitude. Still, it’s better than it was before. 

Then she sends the pic to Murphy, who says,  _ Gratz buddy!  _ and the fact he used an exclamation point — he is both anti-emoji and anti-punctuation — warms her heart a little.

Then, before she can think better of it, she sends it to Bellamy. He takes a long time to reply, over an hour, and when he does, it’s a smiley face, an actual emoji and not a colon and parenthesis like he’s always used. He follows it up with,  _ That’s great.  _

She wants to text Octavia too, but it would come across like a dig, and she knows Octavia wouldn’t appreciate the news, would probably be angered by it. 

_ How are you doing?  _ she asks Bellamy.  _ How is your mom? _

His reply is quicker this time:  _ Up and down.  _ No detail, not even specifying which question he’s answering. Probably both.

_ Are we allowed to text sometimes? _

_ O is always around. I’d rather not. _

_ Can’t you just change my name in your phone?  _ Now she sounds desperate. She doesn’t care.

_ I’m not going to lie anymore.  _

_ Ok,  _ she says, and that’s the end of the conversation. He really is a coward. She crumples her acceptance letter in her fist and throws it across the room.

 

* * *

The day of prom, Clarke drives Murphy to Carmel, Indiana. On the way there, she asks, “Emori knows we hang out a lot, right?” 

“Yeah.”

“And she’s not like, jealous? She doesn’t think you’re cheating on her?”

“Why? Got a thing for me, Griffin?”

“Come on. It’s a serious question.”

He looks like he’s trying not to laugh, fist pressed to his mouth. “No offense, Clarke, but you’re not really my type.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Blonde-haired, blue-eyed goodie-goodies don’t really do it for me, you know?”

“I am  _ not  _ a goodie-goodie. You know that.”

“You’re still the type. Like, I love hanging out with you and whatever, but nothing is ever going to happen between us. Emori knows that.”

Clarke feels like she should be offended, but can’t figure out why, so she lets herself be relieved instead. At this point in her life, any opportunity to avoid drama is something to be grateful for. 

Emori lives in a little ranch house with her parents, who seem to adore Murphy and are eager to meet Clarke. They have a schnauzer named Randall who climbs all over her when she comes in and completely ignores Murphy. Emori’s parents have dinner waiting on the stove, a whole taco bar with crockpot chicken and three different kinds of salsa. Emori is a lot different than Clarke had been expecting; she imagined any woman dating Murphy would be loud and overbearing and a little obnoxious. But she’s short and quiet. Her voice is deep. She’s missing two fingers on one hand. She and Murphy exhibit no outward affection at all, no pet names or holding hands under the table, no gazing at each other like they’re passionately in love. It’s all very normal. Clarke slips Randall bits of chicken under the table. Randall drools on her knee. 

She’s never seen Murphy like this. He’s outgoing. He keeps the conversation moving, asks about Emori’s older brother who is in college getting an accounting degree. Murphy is animated; he tells jokes and laughs easily. He seems completely happy here, and it’s kind of devastating, to know this is what he’s like in an environment where he’s loved. The entire school calls him the cockroach, but they don’t even know him. They don’t know he’s one of the kindest, most loyal people Clarke has ever met, and he’s single-handedly keeping her afloat right now. Where would she be tonight without him? Moping alone on her couch watching a rom com? Scrolling through department store websites looking for the dress she would have bought? Typing out messages to Bellamy and Octavia she’d never send?

Murphy is quick to offer to clean up, and Clarke follows his lead. Emori’s parents retire to the den to watch TV, and the three of them clean the kitchen. 

“I was thinking about a night-hike tonight,” Emori says as she’s drying off a plate. “There’s a meteor shower.”

Murphy’s face pretty much explodes with delight. “First night-hike of the year.”

“What’s a night-hike?” Clarke asks.

“Exactly what it sounds like." Murphy holds his hand up to Emori. "Night-hike!"

Emori high-fives him. "Night-hike!"

God they're cute.

Two hours later, Clarke ends up in the middle of the woods at midnight, lying on her back in a clearing, smoking a joint and watching meteors shoot across the sky. Murphy is on her right, Emori on his other side. They brought a bag full of snacks. It’s warm tonight, barely cold enough for a jacket. The humidity hasn’t set in for the season. The air is still and filled with the music of crickets, bullfrogs, and owls. Indiana isn’t any different than Ohio when it comes to nightsongs. 

Clarke is a satisfying level of high, where she’s relaxed but not quite stupid yet. It’s the first time all year she’s felt like she can actually take a full breath, has hope for herself and the future, can cast aside the pain for just a few hours. 

She thinks about Bellamy all the time still, not just that he’s out of her life, but that he has a girlfriend. A tall, hot girlfriend. A girlfriend old enough to buy alcohol and rent a car. A girlfriend with a full-time job and health insurance, who drives a Prius, who probably has her own place. Clarke isn’t so upset at the image of him fucking her, but at the thought of all the small things — holding her hand, spooning her, falling asleep with her. He doesn’t have to take care of her. They can be separate, individual, equal. It makes Clarke sick when she thinks about it too long, like she could physically suffocate from jealousy. 

But not right now. Right now, she has good company, a sky full of stars, and just a couple weeks left of high school.

 

* * *

At graduation, Clarke searches the stands for Bellamy and Aurora, but can’t find them. She spots Abby, who gives a little wave and is recording a video on her phone. When Octavia walks across the stage to get her diploma, Clarke cheers just as loudly as she’d always planned to. When she crosses the stage herself, it doesn’t really feel like anything. Murphy somehow managed to opt out of walking, so he’s not even in attendance. After the ceremony, Abby gives Clarke a dozen pink roses, and they go out to an expensive restaurant for dinner. 

There’s no graduation party, because who would she invite? When Abby asks her what she wants as a present, Clarke asks for an IOU for when she’ll be able to want things again. 

She goes to Raven’s graduation party though. It’s at a public park, and dozens of people are there. Clarke brings a hundred-dollar Amazon gift card and a dessert tray from a bakery her mom likes. 

Raven seems really happy to see Clarke again, gives her a big hug and goes around introducing her to everyone, referring to her as just Clarke, like she’s told them all the story already, that the girl Finn cheated on her with is now one of her best friends. Raven’s grandma put the whole party together, and the entire family seems to be there along with what looks like a good portion of her high school’s graduating class. Raven’s uncle mans the barbecue. A handful of kids are chasing each other around playing tag. It’s sunny and hot out, and Clarke forgot sunscreen. 

She has a profound appreciation for what her friendship with Raven has become. Sometimes she can’t go to Murphy about certain things because he’s not the type to validate or console. His overall attitude is generally “chin up and get over it,” which is good for Clarke considering she’s been a whiny crybaby her entire life, but sometimes she just wants someone to go “omg that sucks,” and that person is Raven. So when Clarke gets particularly harsh and tactless criticism on her art from Mrs. Williams, she texts Raven about it. When Raven goes on a bomb of a date, she texts Clarke about it. When either of them get drunk, which is rare, they have a pact to text each other and not the respective shitlord men in their lives. About once a week or so Raven will Facetime her and they end up talking for hours, well into the night past their bedtimes. Getting to know someone is kind of amazing. Clarke never runs out of things to say, stories to tell, questions to ask. She thinks now she almost knew Octavia  _ too  _ well, and because of that, deprived herself of the thrill of coming to love a new friend. 

At the party, Clarke meets Raven’s best friends, Sinclair and Wick, and after Raven makes her final rounds as host, the four of them all hole up under the shelter with a bunch of food. They talk for a while, then they break out a few  _ Magic: The Gathering  _ decks and teach Clarke how to play. The game gets interrupted by people leaving and hugging Raven goodbye. Eventually the sun sinks over the horizon and fireflies dot the grass. When they’re done playing, Clarke stays after to help clean up. Raven invites her for a sleepover, but Clarke declines with a promise she’ll come back to visit soon. 

It’s baffling, Clarke thinks, that she’s capable of having fun without Bellamy and Octavia. That there are good and decent people in the world who are happy to meet her, get to know her, play games with her. Who want to keep in touch and who care about how she’s doing. Even though they’ve only hung out twice, Clarke gets the impression she and Raven are going to stay good friends for a long time. Maybe not the kind of friends who talk every day, or even see each other more than once a year, but the kind who are always there for each other regardless of how much time passes, and who always feel close despite their distance.

 

* * *

In June, Murphy moves to Carmel to live with Emori at her parents’ house. Apparently it’s been the plan for years now, and Clarke knew about it months ago, but it doesn’t make their goodbye any easier. Unlike Raven, Murphy is a friend of proximity and circumstance. They might keep in touch here and there, especially at first, but it’ll dwindle over time, and eventually die. She tries to accept that some relationships come with expiration dates. 

Murphy stops over at Clarke’s to say goodbye. Emori is waiting in her mom’s SUV outside. All of his stuff can apparently fit in a single carload.

Even though Clarke hasn’t cried in months, she does now, her arms wrapped around his neck, clutching him tightly. He’s patting her back in an effort to let go. This is how it’s always felt: she needs him more than he needs her, and he doesn’t need her at all. He has Emori, and he’s going to be happier in Carmel with her family than stuck in Arcadia with his asshole of a father. 

Eventually he has to physically pull her arms off of him. “Never thought anyone would be upset to see me leave Arcadia.”

She shoves his shoulder. “Shut up. I can’t help it.” 

“It’s okay,” he says. “I’m only a couple hours away.”

“It’s not that. It’s — you were there for me when no one else was, and you helped me through so much. I just want to thank you for that.”

He stares at her for a long moment, like something clicks in his head, like he’s just now realizing their relationship is real and meaningful, that Clarke loves him in a good, pure, simple way, even if it’s just all the leftover love from Octavia. He huffs a single nervous laugh, looks away. “Dammit, Griffin.”

“I don’t think you know how much you mean to me.”

“Well fuck.” His eyes go a little glassy. He pulls her in for another hug, tighter this time, longer. If Clarke had a time machine, there are a lot of things she’d go back and change. The first would be to save her dad from his car accident. Second, not going to Bellamy for a kissing lesson. Third, saying no to Finn. But all of those have strange repercussions, would warp her timeline beyond recognition. The only safe thing to do, the only sure bet that would without a doubt improve her life, would be to befriend John Murphy much, much earlier. 

Outside, Emori honks the horn. Murphy pulls away, sniffs, takes a long breath. “I’ll see you around, okay?”

“Text me when you get there.”

“Sure.”

She holds the door open and watches him go. He climbs into the SUV. Emori backs out of the driveway. He waves as they drive off.

 

* * *

Clarke leaves for college the day before her eighteenth birthday. Abby helps her move into her dorm, but it doesn’t feel like she’s moved very far at all; CCAD is only an hour and a half outside of town. She can come back to Arcadia whenever she wants. 

Columbus is big and busy. She gets along decently with her roommate, Gaia, who is much more serious about art — as in, actual art, the meaning of it and stuff, and not, like, making pretty things for fun. She’s a Fine Arts major and Clarke is Illustration. Gaia is a sophomore and seems to know everyone already, so she takes Clarke to parties and introduces her around.

The first few weeks of classes come and go. At first Clarke has a sorry case of impostor syndrome, but it rapidly dissipates as she sees how far ahead of her peers she is, who are all passionate and talented, but not particularly disciplined. Most of them are more interested in socializing than drawing. Clarke only goes out when pestered by Gaia and her friends with the promise of weed and shenanigans. Soon her first semester is over, and she’s worried she has carpal tunnel, and she comes home for the holidays with a perfect GPA. 

Her mom takes the whole month off and they spend Christmas in Hawaii. Abby is different now. She started dating Mr. Kane after they met at a school board meeting which he attended to request a short mental health curriculum across the district. She was apparently smitten with the earnestness of his request and asked him to dinner to hear more about it. They’ve been dating ever since.

Not only does she seem happy, now that Clarke doesn’t live in her house, Abby can treat her like an adult person, so she’s much warmer toward Clarke than she used to be. Like a friend, kind of, which is weird, but Abby makes a way better friend than she does a mom. They talk a lot, watch movies, lie on the beach, swim in the ocean, borrow each other’s books. It’s fun, but the world still comes at Clarke with too-sharp edges. Not even the beauty of Kauai and the newfound love of her mother can pull her out of her dark places her head goes.

On New Year’s Eve, Abby is taking a nap when Clarke looks at the clock at six p.m. and realizes it’s midnight in Ohio. Her heart was broken exactly a year ago this moment. She knows back at home, Bellamy is thinking of her too. She wonders if he still loves her as much as she still loves him. If he hates her as much as she hates him. 

She wants to reach out to him. Call or text or take him by the shoulders and tell him what a fucking idiot he is. Is it time? Have they spent long enough apart yet? Was it ever real at all? This is torture. It’s never going to get easier.

She pours herself a glass of wine. Her mom is letting her drink here, because it’s not like she’s going to drive anywhere. Kauai has one road. She takes a postcard from the stack she bought at an ABC Store for a collage project she wants to do. She goes outside and sits on the patio, sips her wine while she looks out at the ocean, thinking, and turns the postcard over. There she writes,  _ Dear Octavia, Bellamy, and Aurora, _

_ Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. _

She stops, realizing it’s Aurora’s last holiday, wonders if Echo was there or if she has her own family somewhere. If Octavia woke them all up at six in the morning, or gave up that tradition. If they decorated the tree and made cookies and watched  _ Nightmare Before Christmas.  _ If Aurora, knowing it was her last, allowed herself for once to enjoy it. 

She wants to mention her first semester in school, but instead writes,  _ I miss you all, and wish you the very best.  _ Below it, she draws a little nativity scene for Aurora since she’s religious. She signs it,  _ All our love, Abby and Clarke Griffin.  _

It might be tasteless, to send a postcard to a family whose mother is dying and who could never afford to come to Hawaii anyway. But she’s desperate to let them know she’s still here, still thinking about them, still loves them, so she sticks a stamp on it and puts it in the mailbox downstairs.

 

* * *

In March, part-way through her second semester, Clarke returns to Arcadia for Aurora’s funeral. She gets the news on a Tuesday from Abby, and misses class on Friday to attend the service. It’s at a small church a few blocks from the bungalow. There is no casket, no burial, only an urn. Clarke was worried about the cost of it all, the medical bills, cremation, funeral home. It couldn’t have been cheap, but when she brought it up in the car on the way here, Abby only said, “It’s been covered.” Clarke is surprised Bellamy would have accepted what was surely a large donation, but then again, the Blakes fed and took care of Clarke for thirteen years. Ensuring Bellamy doesn’t drown in medical debt is the least Abby can do.

About a dozen people are in attendance; Aurora’s only family were her kids. Everyone else seems to be coworkers or acquaintances, plus Monty, Harper, some other girls from the cheer squad. Clarke and Abby sit a handful of rows behind Octavia and Bellamy, who are at the front. Octavia is alone and Bellamy sits beside Echo. Echo has her arm around him. Clarke catches Abby dabbing her eyes with a tissue. She expects Bellamy to get up and say a few words, but he doesn’t. A reverend gives the eulogy beside an easel holding up a picture of Aurora, a wreath around it. He says some things about how God has a plan for everyone, and how “she thrived, in her own way, always keeping busy, never feeling sorry for herself, and was always excited to see her children, Bellamy and Octavia, as well as friends from the town.” It sounds stock and insincere, and Clarke spaces out to keep herself from getting mad. Plucks at a hangnail until a bulb of blood blossoms. She sucks it clean. Beside her, Abby nods along thoughtfully. 

After the service, a reception is held at the Blakes’ house. It should feel like going home, but it’s more like attending a museum of home, these walls that had once held her entire life now empty of meaning. Useless memories she’ll never recapture. She spends a little time catching up with Monty and Harper. They’re going to the same school, Ohio University, both bio majors, and are what they call “pre-engaged,” which is to say they’re intending to get married after they graduate, but don’t want to get anyone too excited since it’s so far off. Clarke congratulates them and means it sincerely. 

She watches Bellamy and Octavia from the corner of her eye. They’re standing near each other, back to back as if outnumbered in battle, while people, total strangers, offer their condolences, touch them gently on the arm, offer the occasional hug, say things like, “She was a truly remarkable woman.”

Echo is in the kitchen putting out food, directing people to the bathroom when they ask, pouring drinks. All things the hosts shouldn’t have to do but tasks that need to be done regardless. At least she’s making herself useful. In another life, Clarke thinks that might have been her job, but maybe not, since Aurora felt more like a mother to her than Abby sometimes, and maybe she would have been standing with the hosts, and people would have been offering their condolences to her, too. But now she’s just another faceless guest who once knew Aurora Blake and wants to pay her respects.

Clarke gathers the courage to approach Octavia first. 

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

Octavia offers a small smile. “Thanks.”

Clarke lifts her arms for a hug and Octavia accepts, though it’s not the kind of hug she’s used to from Octavia — bone crushing, clinging things that last dozens of seconds too long. This one is a brief, polite embrace, and Octavia quickly pulls away. 

“How’s school?” Her cordiality is what hurts Clarke most. She should be angry or rude, but instead she’s placid, distant. She’s wearing a dress Clarke picked out for her from the clearance rack at Macy’s. Black, not a splash of orange in sight. It had been too big for her, and Aurora altered it to her size. Now, it’s too big again. She’s lost weight. A thick layer of foundation and dark eye makeup isn’t enough to cover the circles under her eyes. 

“Good,” Clarke replies. “A little pretentious, but fun.”

“I’m glad,” Octavia says with another fake smile.

“Are you in school?” 

“I’ve been here taking care of Mom. I tried to take some classes at the community college but I couldn’t focus.”

“And now?”

“Who knows. I think I’ll stay with Bell for a while and decide from there.”

“What about Jasper?”

“We broke up.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She shrugs. “He moved to California. We didn’t want to pretend a long-distance thing would work.”

“Maybe you could go out to California with him.”

“Maybe.” She touches Clarke on the shoulder and adds, “Excuse me just a second,” then walks away.

Clarke gets a drink from the kitchen. Echo is refilling a chip bowl. Clarke scoots past her to the fridge to fill it with water from the door and finds her postcard from Hawaii under a magnet with a psalm quoted on it. She’s staring at it, entranced, when Echo says, “I understand you and Aurora were close.”

“We were.”  _ She was a mother to me when my mother refused to be one, _ she wants to say, but not to Echo. 

Echo wipes her hands on a towel. She’s not smiling, for which Clarke is grateful. She doesn’t seem like the kind of woman who expresses any emotion she doesn’t feel. Clarke didn’t realize until now exactly how tall she was, her heavy presence in a room. 

“I was there, at the end.” Echo leans against the counter and crosses her arms over her chest. She’s wearing a black blazer, black button-up underneath. Tight-fitting pants and heels that put her above six foot. “It was hard. They missed you. No one said anything, but — I knew. It felt like something was missing.”

“If I had known,” Clarke begins, but isn’t sure what to say next.  _ I would have left college,  _ maybe? Would she have, really? 

“They didn’t want you to know. It’s not what it sounds like, though. I think they didn’t want to interrupt your life.”

“I wouldn’t have a life to interrupt if it weren’t for them.” She doesn’t know why she says it — she doesn’t want Echo knowing anything about her, or her relationship to the Blakes.

“You should talk to him." That’s how Clarke knows. Knows Bellamy still hasn’t told Echo what she really is to him. Just a very close family friend, a unique circumstance. Because if Echo knew how Bellamy felt, what Bellamy did, she wouldn’t want Clarke anywhere near him. Maybe she wouldn’t want him at all.

“I know today is about them,” Echo adds, “but it’s your loss, too.”

Clarke looks into her cup. Swallows down the new ache in her throat. Steels her chin against the tremble. She won’t cry, not in front of Echo or anyone else. Her tears don’t belong here. She’s standing in the exact spot where she had her panic attack after homecoming. Where she slid to the floor and Bellamy rushed over to calm her. Where she admitted that she thought about him while she’d been with Finn, but couldn’t admit that what Finn had done was abhorrent, just a small sample of what he was capable of.

“Excuse me.” Clarke sets her cup on the counter despite having drunk none of it, exits the kitchen, goes mindlessly toward the bathroom — the crowd has thinned out, people have gone home already. She runs into Bellamy coming out of his bedroom.

“Sorry,” she says, head down, and tries to move past him.

“Clarke.”

She knows she has tears in her eyes. She doesn’t want to look at him, to see what expression he has: cold or kind or pitying or cruel. Any look he gives her would topple the precarious tower of her composure. The last time she saw him, she called him a coward. She regrets it every day. How cruel of her, to prioritize her anger over his grief. 

He touches her arm. “Clarke, look at me.”

So she does, and of course, of fucking course, he has his concerned face on, wrinkle between his eyebrows and all, looking at her like there’s nothing else in the world that matters except her happiness. She hates him. God, she hates him.

The chin tremble. Pressure behind her eyes and nose. Vision distorted. She can’t swallow, can’t breathe. Any movement will ruin her.

He glances around, then takes her arm and pulls her into his bedroom. Shuts the door behind her. Puts his arms around her at the same time she breaks. A silent sob. She clutches the lapels of his suit jacket in her hands. It’s his mother’s funeral, and he’s comforting her. 

“I should have been here,” she says, muffled in his chest. The smell of him brings back her entire childhood, the day she asked him to kiss her, their time at the cabin. She wants nothing more than for him to tilt her chin up and tell her to stop being such a crybaby. Kiss her into calmness. She  _ hates  _ him.

“You couldn’t have,” he says. “You have your own life now.”

She pushes away, wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “Why can’t you be cold like Octavia? Why are you trying to take care of me at your mother’s fucking funeral? Why can’t you just treat me like any other acquaintance?”

“Because you’re not. You never have been, never will be.”

Clarke falls onto his desk chair. He takes a seat on the edge of his bed. His room hasn’t changed at all. The Nine Inch Nails poster hangs directly behind him.

“Echo still doesn’t know about me,” she says. “She thinks I’m just an estranged sister to you.”

“Maybe. Probably.”

“So you’re fine keeping things from her?”

“It’s not keeping things from her if she doesn’t want to know. There’s plenty about her I don’t ask about, either.”

“And you’re okay with that. That...distance.”

“It’s not distance. It’s balance.”

“It sounds like she doesn’t really know you.”

“She knows the parts of me I want her to know.”

“That’s not what a relationship is.”

“Right now, it’s what I want it to be.”

“I’m the only one who knows all of you, aren’t I?”

He loosens his tie, unbuttons the top button. “Do we have to talk about this right now?”

“Are you happy?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course I’m not happy. I’ve spent the past year watching my mother die a painful, horrible death. Things still aren’t okay with Octavia. I’m a substitute teacher at my old high school and I’m still trapped in this goddamn town. I broke up with the woman I love because we got dealt a bad hand. Echo is the only good thing I have going for me.”

“That’s how you see it? A bad hand?”

“If you were older, or I were younger, we might have been able to make it work. But that’s not how it is. I refuse to tie you down, Clarke. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

“It’s not your decision to make.”

“It is, because you’re not old enough to make that decision for yourself.”

“I’m an adult.”

“You used the exact opposite logic to condemn me. Either you’re old enough to take responsibility for your actions or you’re not. And if you’re not, then you’re not old enough to be in a relationship with me.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I really don’t want to talk about this right now.”

“What would you do if I dropped out of school and moved back in with my mom? Would you break up with Echo?”

“No, Clarke. I love her. I’m not going to break up with her.”

“You love her?”

“Yes. But that doesn’t change how I love you. It’s different.”

“You’re not in love with her.”

“I’m not saying that. It’s more complicated than that.”

“So she’s just a warm body?”

“What, you’re telling me you haven’t been with anyone this entire year? Sought comfort in someone just because they offered it?”

She looks him in the eye and says, “I haven’t been with anyone this entire year. I only love you. I only want to love you.”

“Go love some other people for a while. Maybe you’ll find someone better than me.”

“You’re not only a coward, you’re also an idiot.” She leans back in the chair and crosses her arms over her chest. “There is no one better than you. And even if there was, I still wouldn’t be interested.”

“You’re being stubborn.”

She wipes her eyes carefully so as not to smear her mascara. “I can’t feel anything anymore, Bellamy. You did this to me. You took all this light I had inside of me and just —” She pinches her fingers together. “Snuffed it out. You were right about everything. Loving you made life this saturated thing, and without you it’s just. It’s nothing. I keep thinking it’ll get better, that one day I’ll wake up and the weight will be lifted, but it just gets heavier. I’m still trapped in the aquarium. I still love you with every fucking inch of me. And after this, we’re going back to silence. We may never see each other again.”

She wants him to disagree, but he only says, “Yeah. That’s the point.”

“The point?”

“Have you not been listening to anything I’ve said? I love you but I don’t want you. I don’t want you in my life knowing a better one is waiting for you elsewhere. The mistake I made was not in loving you, but in making that love known. In saying yes to you when I should have pushed you away. It was selfish and cruel to let you fall in love with me, to let myself fall in love with you. There isn’t a morning I wake up and don’t wish I could go back to the day you came into my room and let you down gently. But I can’t go back, so all I can do is learn from my mistakes. Be the adult, swallow how much it fucking hurts, and move on. So yeah, after this, we may never see or speak to each other again, and it may take you a few years to realize, but it’ll be the best decision you ever make.”

“God, I hate you.” 

A light knock on the door. From the other side, Echo says, “I need a little help out here.”

“Just a sec,” he calls. To Clarke, he adds, “Good.” He stands, buttons his suit jacket, moves to leave.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she says, nearly wincing at her own sarcasm. She sounds like the child she’s hellbent on no longer being. His mother died three days ago and she’s made this whole thing about her. She hates herself almost as much as she hates him. 

“Whatever, Clarke.” He opens the door. Before he walks out, he turns and says, “It was nice seeing you again.”

 

* * *

When it’s time to leave, she takes her coat off the peg by the door. Most of the guests have left. Abby is out the door first, Clarke following close behind. Outside, it's sleeting, which will make it impossible for her to return to school until the roads are salted. She grips the doorknob and looks back. Octavia is talking to Harper and Monty on the couch. Bellamy is in the kitchen with Echo, throwing plastic cups into a trash bag. Neither of them spare a glance in her direction. Neither say goodbye.

It’s the last she sees of them for a long, long time.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end note for warnings.

In her second-year figure drawing class, Clarke meets Niylah. She likes the way Niylah holds a pencil (between her index and middle fingers), the mismatched floral patterns she wears every day, the lovely jut of her collarbones, her messy hair and deep-set eyes. Later, she comes to love Niylah’s laugh (loud, startling, uninhibited) and that she steals french fries when she thinks Clarke isn’t looking. Clarke loves, strangely, that Niylah is the least creative person she has ever met, and somehow that makes her a better artist. Niylah is mercilessly obedient, draws exactly what she’s told to draw exactly how she’s told to draw it, and has no opinion about how it should otherwise be. It will probably earn her a lot of money one day.

At a Halloween party, Niylah dresses in renaissance wear and covers herself in fake blood. Though she never explains the costume, Clarke thinks it has something to do with the word “period” but the joke doesn’t land. Clarke dresses in regular clothes, jeans and a t-shirt, a hoodie overtop, paint stains on everything she owns. She doesn’t care.

With Niylah, Clarke takes the lead. She knows the look in Niylah’s eyes, knows exactly what to do and say and what feels good. She holds Niylah’s hand and drags her outside into the early autumn cold, presses her against the side of the old brownstone of the OSU frat house hosting the party and kisses her. Niylah melts under her hands, like she’s never been kissed like this: hard, rough, desired. Clarke thought dating girls would be different than guys. It isn't.

But it is exactly like Bellamy said it would be. Easy. Easy because she’s been taught. Easy because she’s been loved by someone who shouldn’t have loved her. Easy because she knows how love is supposed to feel, and this will never be it, but for now, it’s close enough.

Niylah falls in love with Clarke quickly, over the span of mere weeks. Clarke can feel it, can see it in her eyes, the way they light up when the two of them are together. The way she cries out when Clarke lies between her legs. The way she glances over her easel in class to catch Clarke’s eye, as if to say, _I miss you, all the way across the room there._

Over a year later, the break-up is amicable and mutual, as easy as their getting together. Clarke doesn’t feel anything about it, not heartache, loneliness, or loss; not freedom, or interest in pursuing anyone else. Niylah doesn’t tell her why. Clarke doesn’t ask. She knows: Niylah deserves a partner who can love her fully, not someone who only has shards of herself to offer. 

Junior year is filled with flings and trysts, parties, drugs. She gets how Bellamy lost count of the number of people he’d had sex with; she stopped counting too, somewhere near fifteen. Some nights, she doesn’t bother asking for a name. Others she doesn’t remember at all, either because she’s out-of-her-mind high, or the sex is that unremarkable. She’s surrounded by so much pretension that she doesn’t even like drawing anymore. She spends most of her time at OSU just to get away from CCAD students. Everyone smokes and eventually she picks up the habit too, if for no other reason than to take a break from noisy bars and stand outside and breathe. That’s where she meets Lexa.

It’s one of those moments that feels, even in its simplicity, profound. Something in her eyes, predatory. Hungry. Not even Bellamy looked at Clarke with such intensity, as if they already knew each other. Clarke asks her for a light and Lexa passes over an ancient Zippo. In the dim glow of the streetlamp and flickering neon of the bar, Clarke thumbs over the inscription on the side, a design of circles over a line. She lights her cigarette and hands the Zippo back. She likes Lexa’s aesthetic: tight pants, leather jacket, no makeup, tattoos.

Clarke does what she always does to get people in bed with her, makes a simple proposition: her apartment is just a few blocks away. A good time, no strings. Lexa seems to take immeasurable joy out of saying no. When Clarke asks why, she says, “You seem like someone who always gets what she wants.” And when Clarke is too stunned to reply, Lexa adds, “Bet you love when you have to fight for it.”

But she gives Clarke her number, and Clarke doesn’t even wait twelve hours to text her. They meet the next night for dinner, some dive on the bad end of town. Lexa is a gender studies major at OSU. Like Clarke, she’s a junior. Like Clarke, she has no idea what she wants to do when she gets out.

“Travel, maybe,” she says. “Backpack around for a while.”

“We should do that,” Clarke says, unthinking, a chip halfway to her mouth. She would love to see the world, wants it more than she’s wanted anything since Bellamy. To travel with this strange woman who won’t give into her demands. To know someone again, intimately, deeply.

“Moving a little fast there, blondie.”

“Better keep up.”

It takes a long time to wear Lexa down, not because her defenses are particularly high, but because they both enjoy the tension. Lexa calls the shots, denies Clarke’s insistent, sometimes overbearing advances. Sometimes Clarke leans in to kiss her and Lexa turns her head to the side, laughs at Clarke’s frustration. Sometimes Lexa takes Clarke’s chin in hand and says, “I’ll have you when I want you, and no sooner.” Sometimes Lexa will massage Clarke’s shoulders, snake her fingers into Clarke’s hair and pull, say filthy things that make Clarke have to bite her nails into her palm to keep from touching herself. Sometimes Lexa can make Clarke wet with just a look.

When she’s around Lexa, she doesn’t think about Bellamy at all.

Their first kiss takes two months to arrive. As Lexa promised, it’s her choice, her moment. She takes Clarke by surprise, at her apartment, after dinner, a few glasses of wine. It happens in her hallway, Clarke crowded against the wall. Clarke hasn’t felt anything like it since Bellamy, heavy down to her knees, waiting for her next order. If she was eager to defy Bellamy, she’s more eager to obey Lexa.

Lexa enjoys bondage and breathplay, taking a flogger to Clarke’s ass. She owns two hitachis. Clarke has a completely empty room in her apartment that she had been planning to make into an art studio, but then it turns into a weird sex room, complete with very necessary tarp, because they’re both tired of washing their sheets all the time.

For months, Clarke convinces herself she’s only in it for the power play, the feeling of Lexa owning her, but then she starts appreciating the times they drop the act. Appreciating goofy Lexa, the one who makes funny faces at babies, who lights up whenever she sees a dog, and how utterly fucking annoying it is when she goes up to said dog’s owner and asks, “Can I pet them?” Serious academic Lexa, who writes lengthy feminist blog posts no one reads, who spends most of her time in the library, who can quote Virginia Woolf’s letters to Vita Sackville-West by heart. Lazy Sunday Lexa who curls up in Clarke’s arms and refuses to wake up in time for breakfast. Insecure Lexa who tries on clothes at thrift stores and asks, “Are you sure I can pull this off?” to which Clarke always says yes and means it. Completely out-of-her-element Lexa, who looks at all of Clarke’s work and showers it with praise that has no grounding in any knowledge of art, but which Clarke is grateful for anyway. Charismatic Lexa who agrees to meet Clarke’s mom for lunch in Easton, who laments the state of medical care, which puts Abby on edge, until Lexa says, “Obviously I defer to your expertise. I’d love to know your thoughts,” then proceeds to listen intently and ask insightful questions. Abby doesn’t blink an eye when Clarke calls Lexa her girlfriend, and clarifies later over text, _Not apathetic abt your sexuality! Just rly like Lexa, happy for u and living in the current year._ Clarke is thrilled.

There is also accepting Lexa, who knows Clarke is hiding something but doesn’t pry. After dating for a year, Clarke finally tells her about the Blakes, how she still sometimes grieves for them, and how she fights with herself at least once a week about reaching out to them, to see how they’re doing, to ask for forgiveness, to offer hers in turn, but never does, because she is not ready to forgive or be forgiven. She still feels surges of anger and sadness when something reminds her of them: a TV show or movie they’d watched together, passing a stranger who vaguely looks like them, and on one memorable morning at a pub brunch, Clarke had to excuse herself to the bathroom when Lexa’s omelette arrived at the table. When the whole story has been told, Lexa passes no judgment and offers no suggestion. She simply acknowledges and accepts what she’s heard, and tells Clarke, “Love is a fraught endeavor. At once it is our greatest blessing and our deepest curse,” which sounds like it might be a quote from something but is actually just how she talks.

Abby keeps Clarke updated on the Blakes, whom she hears about through the Arcadia grapevine, aka Marcus Kane, who is apparently the town gossip. Octavia joined the Marines, which doesn’t surprise Clarke as much as it should. She’s currently stationed in Dallas. Bellamy got his teaching certification and, when Diyoza quit to spend more time with her kids, he took over for her. No news as to whether Echo is still in the picture.

When Clarke graduates, she gets a few job offers at animation studios doing concept work, but she turns them down. Instead she trades out all her possessions for a backpack. She and Lexa hop on a plane to France, where Lexa’s cousin Luna lives. Neither of them have ever been out of the country.

It’s there that Clarke writes a postcard to Bellamy, a cheesy-looking thing she picks up at a tourist shop. She fills it out quickly —

_I graduated. Traveling for a bit. Hope you’re well. — C_

It’s easy writing to him knowing he can’t write back, and not knowing how he’ll react. Maybe he’ll tear it in half and throw it away. Maybe he’ll put it on the fridge with the one from Hawaii. Maybe he sold the house, it won’t get forwarded to the new address, and be lost forever wherever undeliverable mail goes.

But that’s not her problem. She tosses it in the post and doesn’t let herself think about it.

They stay for three weeks in Luna’s guest room, doing the tourist thing, getting their bearings. They foot around England on Abby’s dime, figuring out how to navigate the backpacker lifestyle — hostels, trains, travel in general. Clarke sends a postcard from every major stop. She keeps her messages short.

_London is expensive. Fewer Daleks than anticipated. Stonehenge overrated. — C_

_Belgium has the BEST FOOD. — C_

_Not much to say about Vienna. Solidly ok. — C_

Then they get to Rome, and suddenly everything is Bellamy. She spends some time on this postcard:

> Bellamy,
> 
> You need to come here. You need to see this place. You’d die. You’d never want to leave. It’s everything you always said it would be, and suddenly I’m remembering everything you ever taught me. I’m pointing out all these facts and anecdotes to Lexa that she doesn’t care about at all. We went to the Coliseum. It’s a tourist trap but a really cool one, totally worth it. I’m sure there’s so much else we didn’t get a chance to explore, but we’re heading to Genoa tomorrow. I’ll write again soon.
> 
> — C

She hasn’t mentioned Lexa before, hopes he’ll figure it out. She carries the postcard around with her nearly the whole day, wondering if she should buy another and write a shorter, colder message. She convinces herself he probably won’t get it anyway and decides to mail it right before they move on.

Greece, Spain, Turkey, Morocco, then all the way to India, where they agree to put Abby’s credit card away and try to make it on their own. Completely on their own. No cell phones or laptops. Clarke mails her phone and MacBook back to her mother; Lexa sells her iPhone for some startup money. Not being complete idiots, they buy a couple burner phones for emergencies. It’s been about nine months since France, and it’s only when they start supporting themselves that Clarke stops feeling so much like a tourist. They get jobs everywhere they land — farms, NGOs, bars, hostels, restaurants. Sometimes they get money, sometimes only a place to stay. They meet people on the road and crash in homes when invited, make friends with other backpackers, stray so far off the beaten path that sometimes Clarke can’t even find postcards. The gay thing is a major problem, but they have a routine: prior to entering any country, when they do their visa research, usually at an Internet cafe or on a hostel computer, they look up attitudes about queerness, which affects their interactions in that country but doesn’t stop them from going there.

Of the few conflicts they have in their relationship, Clarke’s sexuality is one of them. Whenever Clarke flirts innocently with a guy, Lexa says, “Society has taught you to love men, that doesn’t mean it’s real,” and when Clarke insists bisexuality _is_ a real orientation, Lexa says, “I’m not saying it isn’t. I just don’t think you’re bi.” And no matter how often Clarke replies, “I love people. Men are people,” she only gets a _sure, okay, whatever_ look in response. In Beijing, Clarke says, “You’re the one who taught me gender is a social construct we perform. You can’t believe gender isn’t real at the same time you think it’s only possible that I prefer women.” Lexa gives her a look like she’s just a dumb art school student who can’t possibly understand such complicated sociological conceits. When Clarke gets upset, Lexa kisses her, and says, “It doesn’t matter anyway. You’re mine and that’s what counts.”

Every day Clarke goes to bed exhausted, and every morning she wakes up aching from the day before. They sleep on floors, couches, roll-up mats. Sometimes they have to sleep in a tent on the side of the road. When Lexa had first bought the tent, Clarke thought it was ridiculous — when would they not have a roof over their heads? Plenty of times, it turns out. Some nights it’s because they can’t afford a hostel. Others it’s because they’re hitchhiking too far out, too late in the day.

They follow one opportunity to the next. A backpacker in Seoul invites them to do some orphanage work in Ho Chi Minh. They hear about a cool monastery in Bhaktapur. Clarke feels so white and rich and American all the time, all things she knew about herself but never _felt_ before, along with the crushing realization that she’s just another entitled tourist benefiting from the labor of an ethically bankrupt industry steeped in the legacy of colonialism. Lexa doesn’t come to the same realization. To her, travel is a spiritual quest, and she can’t see how pivoting her identity off the immersion into other cultures, while being able to walk away at any moment, is, in itself, exploitation. Everywhere they go, they meet rich white people trying to “find themselves.”

The power dynamic that had allured Clarke when they first met crumbles after a year or so on the road. Lexa gets really into tantra, which is fun, but not nearly as fun as being choked, or fingered on a busy train. There’s still some secrecy to it. They have to be quiet in hostels, quieter when they’re crashing on some kind stranger’s living room floor, but as loud as they want in their tent in the middle of nowhere.

Clarke sees the world through Bellamy’s eyes sometimes, what he would think of this place or that. She talks to him in her head, has to whittle down their lengthy conversations into bite-sized postcard anecdotes. She’s lost track of how many she’s sent — over fifty, maybe. And she has no idea if he gets them, reads them, hates them, loves them.

Despite their physical proximity, Clarke and Lexa often go days without speaking. Lexa holes up in a notebook on the side of the road, Clarke her sketchbook. Sometimes coffee shops, bars, boats, trains, the occasional plane. Lexa feels like an extension of Clarke’s body, so much so that Clarke stops drawing her because she knows her face too well. When she starts drawing Bellamy again, she doesn’t realize it. She’ll be doodling, waiting around for one thing or another, and notice she’s drawn his eye, or his mouth, or his hand. Then she begins drawing all of him put together, her memory of him in profile at the front of Diyoza’s classroom, the curve of his spine as he bends down to pull on a pair of jeans. His face at twelve, sixteen, twenty, twenty-four. She doesn’t hide them from Lexa, nor does she show them. Lexa doesn’t pry, never asks about the postcards, what Clarke’s thinking when she’s staring into space.

The beginning of the end happens in Baguio, where they’re staying in a dorm-style hostel for a few days looking for work. They part ways for most of the day to cover more ground. Lexa has pamphlets and papers and maps spread out on the bed around her, an Ilocano phrasebook in one hand while she attempts to parse through some classified ads. Clarke is on the opposite bed, propped against the wall, drawing a portrait of Bellamy grinning, her sixth attempt. For some reason, she can’t remember what his smile looks like. Maybe he never smiled.

“Are you even listening?” Lexa asks. “This is our livelihood. We need to take it seriously.”

Clarke suppresses a sigh. Lexa hangs onto the idea that this is a high-stakes operation, that any moment they can go under, like she’s _that_ committed to playing pretend when a single transaction and an overnight layover would land them back in Ohio without a scratch. They’re not in danger. This isn’t their livelihood. They won’t starve or die in a hospital bed unattended. They have high-end travel insurance, for godsakes. For a while, Clarke went along with it, the belief they were really living on the edge. Now it seems ridiculous to ignore the no-limit credit card tucked in her passport and an overflowing trust fund waiting at home.

“I’m listening,” Clarke says. “After-school tutoring. Dishwashers. Hostel cleaning. The bar sounds like your best bet. I’ll take the tutoring gig.”

“Are you drawing him again?”

Clarke’s head snaps up. “What?”

“We spend almost every waking moment together, Clarke.” She points at the sketchbook. “You think I can’t see you drawing your ex-boyfriend over and over again? Think I don’t know where your postcards go?”

She has no idea what to say to that. Her jaw is hanging loose.

“He’s halfway across the world and five years in the past. Right now, you’re with me, here, in a dorm in the fucking Philippines. Can’t you live in the present for once?”

Clarke closes her sketchbook, slides on her flip-flops, and heads to the terrace to draw in peace. She can’t believe she used to love Lexa’s blunt honesty. At first, it was thrilling, to know someone who spoke her mind so loudly and clearly. Now all she gets is shit like this and _you smell bad, babe, take a shower._

A couple hours later, Lexa joins her, perches at the edge of the chaise where Clarke is curled up drawing. For a few minutes, Lexa sits in silence looking out at the colorful houses stacked on the hill. It’s warm, a little muggy. The air is sweet in a way it only seems to be this close to the equator.

“When you think of home,” Lexa says, “what do you think of?”

The Blakes’ bungalow in Arcadia. She lies: “I don’t have one.”

“When I think of home, I think of you. The entire world is home as long as I’m with you.”

Clarke wants to believe she’s being sincere, but it could just be one of her melodramatic ramblings meant to make the moment more emotionally resonant than it really is.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Clarke says.

“Tell me you don’t love him anymore.”

“I don’t love him anymore.”

It doesn’t feel like a lie when she says it, nor is it the truth. She loves the ghost of Bellamy Blake, a man who exists in memory. Wherever the real Bellamy Blake is, whatever he’s doing this very moment, he’s not the same man she once loved, like she isn’t the same woman he loved. Travel has a lot of pitfalls, but their friend Ilian, a backpacker they met in Istanbul, once told her that traveling with someone for one day is like spending an entire month with them at home. On the road, lifelong bonds can be forged on two-hour train rides. By that logic, having been backpacking for two years, she and Lexa have aged decades together.

“What you had wasn’t real,” Lexa says.

“Is that so,” Clarke replies, bored.

“Women are taught to seek validation from men in positions of authority. Often this pursuit can be misconstrued as romantic desire. You were only performing a role for him, the same way you’re submissive to me. The difference is that I know you are my equal. We are aware of the performance. We choose when the curtain rises and when it falls. With him, you were genuinely in a position of supplication, and he had real power over you. Then, when it became inconvenient for him, he abandoned you. He took that validation away. So now you fixate on him as the personification of your need to be seen, as if in drawing him repeatedly, he’ll be able to give you that which you desire most: the love your mother never offered you, the love your father’s death prevented you from having.”

Clarke erases the corner of Bellamy’s lip. “Thanks, Freud.”

“You don’t even care. You don’t care why you do the things you do or why you want what you want. You never have. You don’t inspect yourself at all.”

“Why should I when you do all the psychoanalytical lifting for me?”

“Don’t disregard me. I have empathy for you, Clarke. What do you do when you still love someone who hurt you beyond repair? What do you do when that love might be false?”

“I just told you I don’t love him.”

“Yet you’re looking at his face right now and not mine.”

Clarke looks up from her drawing. “Better?”

“I’m trying to have a conversation with you.”

“You’re trying to tell me how I feel. The sooner you make your divine proclamation, the sooner I can agree with you and we can drop the subject. So get on with it.”

Lexa takes Clarke’s hand and holds it between both of hers.

“You gave him pleasure in exchange for his praise.”

Clarke pulls her hand away, looks back at her drawing, sinks lower onto the chaise. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Look.” Lexa takes Clarke’s chin and pulls it toward her, forcing her eye contact. “I accept that I will never have your whole heart, but I cannot accept your refusal to mend what is still broken in you.”

Clarke swats Lexa’s arm away. “Can you quit being so fucking dramatic for five seconds and talk to me like a normal person? Jesus.”

“Okay,” Lexa says, giving up. “Okay. Whatever.” She stands and says, “I’ll go start dinner. Meet you downstairs.”

Their relationship isn’t the same after that. Nothing is discernibly different, but Lexa seems more closed-off. One benefit of tantra is that Clarke can feel what Lexa is feeling, deep emotional intuition, but now that connection is severed. Sex, which had come to feel like a practice in worship, something sacred and near-religious, is just regular old sex. Bodies getting off together. Their silences which were once so comfortable and warm are stilted and cold.

Every day, Clarke thinks she should confront Lexa, sit down and have a long talk about how she does live in the present, how she doesn’t have feelings for Bellamy, that she doesn’t miss “home” and she’s happy, more than happy, to be on this adventure so few people get to have. But she says nothing, because she’s not sure if any of that is true. She knows she’s tired, a soul-deep tired that no twenty-four-year-old should feel. She knows when her mind idles, she dreams of settling somewhere for more than a few days or weeks at a time. She knows she wants something she can’t articulate no matter how deeply she meditates at six a.m. every day. She has no stillness anymore; what started as a ripple of doubt has grown into a tidal wave.

They’re in Nagasaki when it happens. Their break-up is the opposite of how they got together: suddenly and concretely. They did Europe and Asia, and for months they’ve been considering moving on. Lexa wants to go to Africa; Clarke, South America. Clarke thinks Africa will be a logistical and visa nightmare, and she wants to learn Spanish. Lexa refers to Africa as “the heartland.” Whenever she says that, Clarke tells her, “You’re a white girl from Ohio. Your parents are architects.” It’s not a fight at all, really. There’s no emotion behind it, just another discussion about where to go next like they’ve had a hundred times before. Then, as Lexa is folding a pair of underwear that honestly, Clarke thinks may have started out as hers, she says, “Why don’t we split up? I’ll do Africa, you do South America, we’ll meet again at Luna’s maybe. Or Australia or something.”

It’s not really a break-up. Lexa is only suggesting they go their own way for a while. Backpackers do it all the time. It’s normal. But what seals it for Clarke is the relief she feels at the suggestion. The excitement. Travel has never gotten stale, but it’s gotten shallow. She no longer feels the profound epiphanic plight of vagabonds everywhere. Every place is just a place. Food is just food. People are always just people, with different beliefs and upbringings, with more and less money, and different depths and manner of oppression. Clarke is no happier in Shibuya than she is in Arcadia. The world seems so small now.

Two weeks later, they’re at the Chubu Centrair Airport. Lexa kisses her, briefly so as not to attract the attention of the hundreds of people surrounding them. She rests her forehead on Clarke’s, and says, in the way only Lexa can get away with, “May we meet again, Clarke Griffin.”

The idea seems so reasonable, so normal, that Clarke makes herself believe it’s really a temporary goodbye. But, like with Murphy, to whom she hasn’t spoken in years just as she predicted, she knows it’s not. They reached the expiration date of their relationship months ago, and they’ll probably never see each other again. Yet Clarke’s sadness isn’t heartbreak. It’s the same sadness she feels when an animal dies of old age, a sense of satisfaction that it lasted as long as it did, as fully, as happily, even if the ending is gruesome and tragic. Their relationship ends as all things end, and she can let go. She didn’t think she was capable of watching Lexa walk down a different terminal in the opposite direction, a piece of Clarke’s heart forever in her pocket, and feel nothing but bittersweet gratitude for the years they shared together.

 

* * *

 

Clarke flies into Venezuela because it’s the cheapest flight. Gets detained in customs, which she’s pretty used to by now. Struggles with the visa, which is also status quo. She only knows enough Spanish to ask for someone who speaks English, which would have never embarrassed her two years ago — everyone should know English anyway, she used to think — but now she finds it mortifying, to go into someone else’s country and demand to only speak to people who know the language from her country. It feels unbearably American of her, and she promises herself she’ll learn enough Spanish to get by without getting the dreaded “you poor little American girl” look that people everywhere have given her.

She breaks out Abby’s credit card in Caracas and gets an actual hotel room. Five stars. The most expensive in the city, which still only comes out in US dollars to a couple hundred a night. She stays there for a week, taking up the entire bed, watching TV, showering with scalding hot water, re-organizing her backpack. She sends Bellamy a postcard her second night:

_Lexa and I went our separate ways. New continent, new adventure._

She hesitates, hotel pen poised in hand, and adds, _I’ve been thinking about you a lot. — C_

Ever since her argument with Lexa, a seed of doubt has grown in Clarke's gut, an imperceptible change slowly shifting her worldview. For years, Bellamy has felt dead to her, her postcards a mere seance. But not anymore. She is acutely aware that somewhere in the world he is alive, and he has all the memories she does of their upbringing, their relationship. She imagines he thinks about her, too. Maybe this very second. It's a difficult realization to grapple with: she shouldn't miss him as much as she does. She shouldn't daydream about coming home to him one day. 

She decides she wants to settle down somewhere for a while, so she spends hours in the hotel lobby on the computers (for which she doesn’t have to buy internet time, a blessing), and applies for a job in Peru teaching art for an after-school program. She’s worked a lot of sketchy voluntourist places, but this one seems like it genuinely cares about the community. The job comes with no pay, but room and board is covered. The volunteer house has wifi and hot water. She only has to pay for travel.

In the time since she last used the internet, Abby has sent her half a dozen emails. Apparently she and Marcus have sold their respective houses and moved to Columbus. She assures Clarke her belongings have not been tampered with, just boxed up and put in a storage unit in Arcadia along with some furniture that went unsold, so when Clarke moves back, she has an apartment’s worth of stuff waiting for her. Marcus got a job at a high school in Lancaster; Abby is expanding her practice. One of the emails is just a picture of them together in front of the new house beside a SOLD sign. The house doesn’t look as big or as nice as the one in Arcadia, just a well-tended white box with a two-car garage, but Abby was always complaining about their old house being too big and empty anyway.

Clarke has an email from Raven too, thousands of words long, updating her on her life with many and varied spelling errors. She graduated from MIT and is working as a mechanical engineer, still in Pittsburgh, making bank. She’s engaged to an Air Force pilot named Zeke. They have two pugs. It takes Clarke three hours to reply in kind, because it’s been months since she’s been able to, and there’s a lot to say. By the time she’s done, it’s dark outside, and the receptionists have changed shifts.

It’s a strange feeling, watching life move forward back at home while being so far away. She feels simultaneously like a completely new person, and one who hasn't really changed at all. She has no career, no partner, no plans except the immediate future. She doesn’t let herself think about what it would take to end this journey; in her mind, it doesn’t stretch on forever, but she also knows there is no end to the road, no finish line, no return ticket, yet ample paths to take. She has loved many people and many places, but none of them are home. Eventually, she knows she has to go back.

The next day, she calls the director of the school in Peru on the hotel phone, surprised to find a young American woman named Lara on the other end, who gives her a brief and informal interview. Clarke tells her she can start as soon as she gets a flight to Peru, that she has a BFA in illustration from CCAD, but that she doesn’t know much Spanish. Lara is from Chicago; they bond over their shared love-hatred of the midwest, and Lara hires her on the spot.

The program is in a shantytown called Huaycán. Clarke adapts quickly to the environment, meets the other volunteers who have all been there for varying lengths of time. She’s given complete reign over the art curriculum and a small budget for supplies. Her classes are held in various spots all over town, from Zona A, closest to the volunteer house, to Zona D, a forty-minute trek up a steep hill. She has to take combis to some, hike to others, sometimes both, all with massive bags of art supplies on her shoulders. She gets pickpocketed daily, starts storing decoy sols in her pockets. The kids show up to class hyper after being trapped in school all day. The language barrier doesn’t pose as big of a problem as she thought it would. She shows them what they need to do and they do it. They go home with little paper mache lanterns, tissue-paper garlands, recycled water-bottle bird feeders. She’s not saving the world, and she’s not trying to. She’s just giving some kids something to do in the afternoons.

Huaycán isn’t a tourist spot, so there are no postcards. Clarke writes a letter instead.  

> Dear Bellamy,
> 
> I’m teaching art in a place called Huaycán. I thought it was pronounced hoo-ay-can at first but it’s more like why-con. It’s a year-long commitment, but I like it here. It’s slightly less morally bankrupt than other voluntourist gigs, even though all the other volunteers are trying to find themselves instead of wanting to help the community they’re supposed to be here to help. The kids are cute. They like art, but I have a newfound sympathy for teachers. Teaching is really hard. And I still suck at Spanish, so there’s that.
> 
> I mentioned in my last postcard that I’ve been thinking of you. I know that’s a loaded statement, and I wish I could say exactly what I mean by it, but it’s as simple as that. I’ve been thinking of you. Just you, who you were, what we were. I’m almost the age you were when everything fell apart, and I wish I could say my eyes are open now, that I completely understand what happened between us, but I don’t. I can’t. I managed to let it go for years, make peace with our distance, fall in love again, move on like you said. Once, you told me that you thought I would forget you. You made it sound like you wanted me to forget you. I’ve tried, but my memories never fade for long. I dream of you. I draw you. When I’m waiting on buses or at the side of the road, a flicker of you crosses my mind. You were my entire world once, and that’s what made it so wrong. Now, we take up the same amount of space. You are no bigger than me.
> 
> Near the end, Lexa asked me where home was. I think she wanted some profound response, but for me the answer is literal. Arcadia is home. I spent my whole life with the assumption I’d grow up and move away, see the world, do something huge and important. But I am not going to fulfill all the potential you once saw in me. I enjoy art and being in the company of people I love. In that sense, nothing has really changed. Does life have to be more than that? Are we obligated to live at our max capacity, or are we allowed to live modestly, for the sake of comfort and happiness? There are so many things I could do. I could be a doctor like my mom. I could move to a different state and make a good income in concept art. I could continue traveling until my feet fall off. I used to think I could save the world, but I’ve been to the world, and it doesn’t need saving. Not by me anyway. Not in the ways I thought it did.
> 
> I can do anything, go anywhere, love anyone. With all my options open, all my avenues explored, I am left to consider, not what I am capable of, but what I want.
> 
> Despite all the years that have passed, what I want has not changed. I want a life of smallness. I want to forgive you, and to earn your forgiveness in turn. I want to come home to you.
> 
> And I want to love you again.
> 
> — C

She encloses a landscape she drew of the view from the roof of the volunteer house, clothes on the line hanging to dry, hazy pink sunset over the Andes, and mails the letter the following day.

 

* * *

 

The year in Huaycán is a hard one. It feels like a reality show sometimes, how often the volunteers are at each other’s throats. They fight all week and party all weekend. Clarke goes back to the mentality of her college days, drinking too much (pisco sours are her kryptonite), one-night stands with cute Peruvian boys who use gringas as arm candy for VIP rooms. She learns to salsa dance, albeit badly. She watches her kids improve creatively week after week. She puts little attendance stickers on a laminated board hanging in their dirt-floor, shanty-hut classrooms. She makes friends she knows she’ll keep in touch with, and some she knows she’ll never see again. She learns to appreciate the temporality of intimacy. She spends some months happy and others miserable. She gets sick of the film of dirt that coats every surface, that gets in her clothes, her lungs. She misses rain. She tries to email her mom and Raven at least once a month. The food is to die for. After half a year and an attempt at reading several translated novels, she gets the hang of Spanish. She thinks maybe her letter to Bellamy would prompt an email, that he would reach out to her, but she receives only silence in reply, like her postcards. She takes that silence as confirmation that he’s moved on, maybe emotionally or maybe physically, as in, he sold the house. Either way, she doesn’t send him anything else.

Suddenly her contract is up, Lara and the other volunteers are wishing her goodbye, and a taxi is waiting downstairs to take her to the airport.

So she goes to Bolivia, picks up the backpacker life again. Appreciates it for about a month, feeling the same freedom she did in the very beginning after a year in one place, then remembers all the reasons she hated it. She enjoys the salt flats but misses Huaycán more than she thought she would. From Bolivia, she makes her way through Chile.

And it’s in Viña del Mar, in a hostel she’s working at in exchange for a free bed, on their barely functioning computer, that she gets an email from Octavia. It comes in while Clarke is updating her mom on her whereabouts. She clicks on it immediately.

> Hey Clarke,
> 
> I don’t know if you check this email anymore, but it looks like you haven’t been on Facebook in a long time and your cell number is disconnected.
> 
> Bellamy got into an accident a few hours ago. I don’t know how bad it is. I think he’s in surgery now. I can’t leave here. I have a meeting with a major prospect tomorrow. I know that sounds horrible but it’s a “make it or break it” deal.
> 
> I don’t think anyone is there for him so I was wondering if you’d be able to come home for awhile to help (as much as he’s willing to be helped).
> 
> I’m sorry to spring this on you. I know it’s been years and this is probably a long shot. I just don’t know who else to ask.
> 
> Let me know as soon as you can.
> 
>  
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> **Octavia Blake**
> 
> **CEO, Trikru Social Media Group**
> 
> _ Get your free quote today! _

Clarke reads the entire email again. Her heart throbs in her ears. Her hand is over her mouth and she wants to — she doesn’t know. Run. Hop in her car and drive five minutes to the Blakes’ house. But she’s in the southern hemisphere.

She emails back: _I’ll fly home right now._ Then she pauses, and adds, _Thank you for telling me. I’ll update you when I get stateside._

She writes a scattered note to the hostel management, an elderly man named Cristobal who doesn’t speak a word of English. People have left with less notice, so she’s not worried about it. In her room, she pulls out her burner phone and scrolls down to her mom’s travel agent. Normally she goes to the airport and figures it out from there, because when you don’t have anywhere to be in a hurry, or anywhere to be at all, it doesn’t really matter what flight you catch or when. Thank god it’s only three in the afternoon in Columbus and he picks up on the first ring. Clarke explains that there’s been an emergency and she needs to get on the fastest flight home, shortest layover possible, price doesn’t matter.

By the time she hangs up, she’s already outside, backpack on, hailing a taxi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some biphobic and racist remarks/actions from Lexa, who is not an intersectional feminist.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to split ch16 into two chapters, and there's an epilogue! So 18 chapters. The same plot points I initially planned remain, they just took more words than I anticipated. That'll be it though, I swear.

Clarke lands in Columbus at two the next afternoon, having not slept at all on the flight. She had an hour-long layover in Houston where she had to navigate through customs. The officer she spoke with smiled at her and welcomed her home, which was jarring given the hassle of entering every other country, especially Commonwealth countries, as an American. She stared out the window through the entire flight from Houston, watching her own country pass below. While she was abroad she had always imagined this moment, her homecoming, as something she would dread or maybe find thrilling, coming back with all this new understanding of existence. But she only worried about Bellamy and planned what she would say to him, assuming he was even still alive.

She picks up her backpack from baggage claim and signs for a rental car, a Kia something. It looks like a toaster. She tosses her bag in the back. Before she climbs in, she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. The air smells so different here. It’s May. Mown grass and corn. Sticky humidity. The sulfuric tang of hot asphalt. Everywhere, orange traffic cones scattered on concrete like neon weeds.

She gets in the driver’s seat, bizarrely on the left, key in hand. She’s forgotten how to drive. It’s been three years since she sat behind the wheel of a car. Eventually muscle memory kicks in and she hits the road, GPS counting down the two-hour drive to Arcadia Memorial Hospital. Her driver’s license is expired, a detail the rental car company thankfully failed to notice, but she speeds anyway.

Arcadia Memorial is so small, they have only one parking lot for the whole building. She parks crookedly, one tire over the white line, and marches in the front doors ready to raise hell if she needs to, not being family, but she only drops his name at the front desk, and a receptionist tells her he’s in room 318.

She’s too antsy to wait for the elevator so she runs up the stairs, speed-walks down the hall as she counts down room numbers from 350, follows the helpful little arrows on the wall like in hotels, and nearly passes 318. She stops so abruptly her shoes squeak. A curtain is pulled around his bed. She enters the room slowly. Maybe it’s not him. Maybe she has the wrong room. Her hands tremble; she balls them into fists. Her heart is beating so fast she’s having trouble breathing. Peeking out from the curtain, one of his legs is lifted in a sling, a bulky black brace around it reaching from his ankle to his thigh. She makes it past the curtain, and that stunned horror comes rushing back, when she found him in the garage with his head cracked open.

He’s asleep, she thinks. A dozen stitches run down his temple. Half his face is purple with bruising. Some minor cuts — one under his eye, another on his chin. His lower lip is split. His left arm has a few more stitches in it but otherwise looks fine. The worst of it seems to be his leg.

His hair is longer now, his beard fuller, a few white hairs speckled in. He looks like he might have gained a little weight, probably in muscle, knowing him. Otherwise he looks exactly the same. She lowers herself into a chair, covers her face with her hands, forces herself to breathe. Years ago the sight of Bellamy in a hospital would have made her cry, but she hasn’t cried in years. Like driving, it’s as if she’s forgotten how.

There’s nothing to do but wait, so she leans back in the chair and stares at him. Her portraits were all wrong. She’d been drawing his nose too thin, eyebrows too thick, cheekbones too high, lips too low. Millimeters off; no one would notice but her. She won’t get it wrong again. She can’t believe how long it’s been since she’s seen him: six years. Over seven since the cabin. So much has changed, but also nothing at all. She wonders who he’s become.

Eventually a nurse comes in and fills Clarke in on the details, which she shouldn’t because of HIPAA, but small-town logic always trumps legality. He has three fractures in his leg, but his surgeries went well, and he’ll be able to go home in the next couple days. Right now he’s heavily sedated. The nurse leaves after checking his vitals. His cell phone and wallet are on a table by the bed, along with a pair of glasses which are splattered in blood. New frames, black plastic on top, none on bottom. Very teacher-y. She picks up his phone; the screen is cracked, either from the accident or a prior drop, she can’t tell. His password is still the same, Octavia’s birthday, and his background picture is the stock photo that came with the phone, rolling green hills under a blue sky. Some things don’t change.

As tempted as she is to snoop into his texts, she opens only his favorited contacts. Again, no change, still her and Aurora and Octavia, even though Clarke’s number hasn’t been connected in years, and Aurora passed away. No Echo. Interesting. She clicks Octavia’s name and brings the phone to her ear.

Octavia answers after two rings. “Bellamy?”

“It’s me.”

“Oh,” Octavia says. “You’re there already?”

“Yeah.”

“How is he?”

Clarke updates her on everything the nurse mentioned, and that he’ll be able to go home soon, but will probably need to come back for physical therapy.

“Oh, thank god,” Octavia says. “When they call to tell you what happened, they’re so calm about it. You can never tell how bad it really is. Sorry I panicked and asked you to come home.”

“It’s fine. I wasn’t — I’d been wanting to come home for a while.”

“So you’ll stay? Help him get around?”

“Yeah, of course.” She pauses. “Where are you?”

“I live in LA now. Burbank.”

“He doesn’t have anyone local?”

“He might have some friends, I don’t know, but he hasn’t mentioned anyone to me. I don’t even know what he’s doing with himself these days.”

“What about Echo?”

“They broke up. I’m not sure why. He just told me it wasn’t working out.” A man’s voice comes in the background. Octavia’s follows, away from the phone. She comes back and says, “I’m going to finish up a couple things here and catch a flight home in the next few days. Can you keep Bell’s phone on you for now? Check back when he’s awake?”

“Sure,” Clarke says. They say their goodbyes and she hangs up. She settles in at Bellamy’s side with a book she took from the hostel take-a-book-leave-a-book pile, a Spanish translation of _Breaking Dawn._

Around six, Bellamy lets out a small groan. Shifts a little. Clarke leans forward, puts a hand on his good arm. He blinks open his eyes and looks at her, vision cloudy, and says, “Clarke?”

“It’s me. I’m here.”

“You’re gonna be late.”

“For what?”

“School. Get up. Come on.” Then his head rolls to the other side and he falls back asleep.

Another few hours pass. She watches the sunset over I-70 through the blinds, and is considering sneaking down to the cafeteria when Bellamy wakes up again. He tries to sit up and Clarke puts a hand on his shoulder.

He does a double-take when he notices her. “What the fuck.” He looks at her, then down at himself, and then at her again. “Am I dead?”

“You’re not dead.”

“What happened?”

“You got into a car accident.”

“I know that. I mean why the hell are you here?”

“Octavia asked me to come home.”

“You came _home?”_

“As you can plainly see, yes.”

He shoves off his blanket, moves like he’s about to climb out of bed. “How long have I been out?”

She puts her hand on his shoulder again to keep him down. “A day or so. You’ve got to stop moving.”

“Where were you that you got here in a day?”

“Just Chile.”

 _“Just_ Chile. My god.” He pronounces it “chili” like most Americans do. He lifts his bad arm, winces, and switches to his other one, covers his eyes with his hand. He takes a few deep breaths. “Fuck. I fucking loved that truck.”

“I know.”

“I have to buy a new car. Press charges against that punk-ass piece of shit that t-boned me. And then there’s this shit.” He gestures to his leg. 

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. You shouldn’t be here. You should be in Chile. I can’t believe Octavia called you.” He pats around on the bed. “Where’s the goddamn morphine.”

She hands him the little white cord. He takes it and smashes the button a few times and closes his eyes. She sits at the edge of her chair, waiting for him to do or say something, offer some confirmation that it’s okay she’s here, that he’s glad to see her, grateful she came to his rescue.

It doesn’t come. He falls back asleep, and wakes up again an hour later when a new nurse jaunts happily in to check his vitals, humming. She updates him on how the surgery went and what he should expect over the next few days. The doctor will be in tomorrow to clarify a few things and hopefully figure out a time for release.

When the nurse leaves, Clarke tells him, “Visiting hours are ending soon. I can get a hotel room tonight and come back in the morning.”

“It’s fine,” he says. “You can stay at the house. You’ll need to bring me a change of clothes anyway. Where’s O?”

“She said she had a prospect meeting.”

He huffs indignantly. “Of course she did.”

“But she also said she’ll be here in the next few days.”

“When it’s convenient for her, I’m sure.”

Clarke doesn’t know enough about either of their lives to defend her or reassure him. Instead she says, “You’ll need some help over the next few weeks. I was thinking —” She looks down at her hands, picks at the graphite lodged under her nail. “I could stay a while.”

He doesn’t say anything. When she glances up, his eyes are closed.

“I don’t want to think about it right now,” he says. “One day at a time, okay?”

“Okay,” Clarke echoes. “One day at a time.”

 

* * *

 

It’s nearly ten by the time she leaves the hospital. She goes to McDonald’s on her way since she hasn’t eaten all day, and gets a little thrill out of going through the drive-thru for the first time in years, the simplicity of speaking English into a box, and driving up to the window, making a plain old credit card transaction, taking her food and wishing the worker a good night. No language barrier, no currency exchange math in her head, no figuring out which coins and bills equal how much. She orders a Big Mac and large fry and a strawberry shake.

She parks in the driveway of the Blakes’, though she supposes it’s just Bellamy’s house now, takes her food, and punches in the garage door code. It all feels both new and deeply familiar, like finding a beloved childhood toy in an attic. The garage opens. Inside, Bellamy’s truck is missing. She assumes it got towed somewhere. The stain is still on the ground from where he cracked his head open. Two bicycles are hanging on the ceiling. Where Aurora used to park, in the other half of the garage, is a gym of sorts: a squat rack, weight plates scattered on the ground, a pull-up bar. She opens the back door and closes the garage, steps inside like she has thousands of times before, but this time it’s different, because Aurora isn’t napping and Octavia isn’t painting her toenails on the couch and Bellamy isn’t playing video games in his room. It smells like it always has, the indescribable way other people’s houses always smell.

She flips on the light. The couch is new — a boxy, modern grey thing. The TV is bigger, and surround-sound speakers hang on the ceiling. She goes into the kitchen first. The fridge has been replaced with a big stainless steel one. A touch screen tells her the weather, seventy-five and cloudy. The stove and countertops are the same.

She sets her food on the dining room table, which has been pushed against a wall and repurposed as a desk, covered in books and newspapers. Down the hall, she opens the door to Octavia’s room, which is a clean version of how she always kept it, the closet and bookshelves empty. Next, the bathroom, which hasn’t changed except a beard trimmer is charging on the sink, and the toilet seat is up. Then, Bellamy’s room, which isn’t his room at all anymore, but what looks like a guest room. No Nine Inch Nails poster, no PS4. The walls have been painted a tasteful beige. The bed sits in the middle instead of lodged in the corner. There are bedside tables and sconces above them, but otherwise the space is empty. She guesses this is her room now.

She reaches the end of the hall and enters Aurora’s bedroom, which is now obviously Bellamy’s — neat but lived-in, bed hastily made, clothes in the hamper, a stack of books on the floor, a half-full jar of dusty change on the bedside table. A TV is mounted to the wall across from the bed, and underneath it is a new gaming console Clarke doesn’t recognize. It glows green. She looks around, taking it all in, and it’s only when she’s about to turn away and leave that she spots what’s on the wall behind the door.

A map of the world, the massive kind you pull down in geography classrooms and point at with yardsticks. Tacked to the map are postcards, her postcards, pinned carefully at the corner to each place she visited, a string trailing across her path to keep them in order. She reaches up and follows it with her finger, catches glimpses of memories in each one, and takes it all the way to Venezuela. From there she trails her finger down to Peru. Huaycán doesn’t even show up as a dot, only Lima, just like Arcadia isn’t a dot in Ohio, only Columbus. She expects to see her letter tacked there, but instead it’s only her drawing of Huaycán, which means he received her letter. Which means he’s spent an entire year knowing how she feels about him. She wonders where the letter itself is. Maybe he threw it away. Maybe it upset him. Maybe there’s a reason he never reached out via email.

Until now it never occurred to her that he was actually receiving her postcards, but they’re all here. Every single one. In her head, they disappeared into an abyss. It was as if she were only writing to her memory of him without acknowledging he still existed in the present, that he was growing and changing and living his life across the world. Endured petty day-to-day dramas, monotonous boredom, despair and delight, all the things that make life both amazing and totally useless. She was off on her grand, once-in-a-lifetime adventure, and he was here, in his little bungalow, hunched over his infinite stack of grading, waiting for her next postcard to tack up on his map. It seems like a punishment he inflicted on himself.

She backs up a few steps; the mattress hits her legs and she sits down, still staring at the map, all the places she’s been while he’s been here, just here, without her. Without Octavia. Without Aurora. Without Echo. Alone.

She can’t bear the thought. She curls onto her side, her head on his pillow. It smells like him, hits her so hard she closes her eyes and feels like she’s four years old again, falling asleep on her big brother’s lap while he watches TV. She rolls on her stomach, smothers herself in the pillow. She reaches her hands underneath and —

Paper. An envelope, torn open. Her letter. She sits up and pulls it out. Neatly trifolded, but the creases are so worn they’ve ripped at the edges. She unfolds it. The paper has turned flimsy in the way old letters do when passed through too many hands. He had to have read it hundreds of times for it to look like this. She sees it so clearly: him, lying in bed, her letter under his pillow, reading it before he falls asleep each night. He still loves her. He has to. 

 

* * *

 

She wakes up early the next morning, having slept better than she has in years. She chose the guest bedroom instead of Octavia’s room because she guesses she’s a guest now. He still keeps the coffee and cereal in the same spots, but he has generic raisin bran instead of frosted corn flakes, presumably because Octavia doesn’t live here anymore, and almond milk instead of two-percent. The coffee maker is a fancy thing with a thousand buttons that she’s afraid to touch, so she decides she'll pick up coffee on her way to the hospital.

She washes her bowl and the few dishes that were in the sink. Throws her laundry in the washer, but doesn’t have enough clothes for a full load, so she tosses his in with hers. Takes a shower. He only has generic-brand shampoo and a bar of Irish Spring, no army of half-filled bottles like Octavia used to keep lined up at the edge of the tub. Clarke has always loved the water pressure here, so high it pounds against her back, the hardened muscles of her shoulders from the weight of her backpack.

She gets dressed and packs a duffel bag for him in case he gets released today. She takes too much care in picking out an outfit — his clothes all seem new. He has an assortment of dress shirts, undershirts, slacks, and ties, but only a couple pairs of jeans and a handful of t-shirts. And sweater vests. So many sweater vests. An embarrassing number of sweater vests, really, all in terribly boring colors: forest green, navy blue, maroon, taupe. She picks out a pair of boxers, basketball shorts to fit over his cast, the oldest and softest t-shirt she can find, white with the _Led Zeppelin IV_ album cover on it that he got at Hot Topic when he was fifteen. She found it tucked away in the lowermost dresser drawer, and brings it to her face to smell. Organic detergent, cedarwood. She places it in the duffel with the rest of his clothes, and before she leaves his room, she grabs the book on his nightstand, _D-Day_ by Stephen Ambrose, not even a library copy but a paperback with frayed, dog-eared corners and a broken spine. She thumbs through it and finds underlines and highlights and little penciled notes in the margins. She tosses it in the bag along with the pair of glasses that had been on top. Before she leaves she remembers to get the newspaper off the porch.

On her way to the hospital she picks up Starbucks, because apparently Arcadia has a Starbucks now. It’s probably packed with high schoolers all the time. She orders him an iced caramel macchiato because that’s what he always got when they went to Starbucks in Easton, even though he’s a coffee snob and you’d think he’d want a venti Sumatra or whatever. She gets herself a mocha frappuccino.

At the hospital she smiles at the receptionist who smiles back, and this time takes the elevator up to the third floor. Bellamy is awake, sitting up, flipping through channels what appears like angrily. She puts the coffees on his side table and drops the duffel by the chair, opens it and takes out the newspaper, book, and glasses and puts them on the table too, takes the bloody glasses and tosses them in her purse to clean later.

“You came back,” he says.

“I said I would.”

“Thought you might’ve hopped on a plane to Reykjavík or something.”

“Considered it.”

He turns off the TV, takes his coffee, inspects it like it might be poisoned.

“How are you feeling today?” she asks.

“Like I got hit by a car.”

“Did the doctor say you could go home?”

“Hasn’t come by yet.”

“Do you mind if I use your phone to call my mom?”

“Where’s your phone?” He takes a sip of coffee.

“I don’t have one.”

“Mine’s dead.”

“I brought your charger.”

“Jesus. You remembered everything. Even my coffee order. I haven’t seen you in six years and you remembered my coffee order.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” She occupies herself with finding an outlet on the other side of the bed and plugging his phone in. She leans against the wall and waits for it to turn back on. “I forget what airline I flew in on, but I remembered where you hide your weed.” In an Altoids tin, rolled up in a pair of socks in his drawer.

“I’ve never told you that.”

“Octavia did.”

“I never told her that.”

“She snooped around a lot.”

“You didn’t smoke any, did you? That shit is old.”

“No, I pretty much passed out when I got there. I slept in the guest room.”

The phone comes on and Clarke finds Abby’s number in his contacts. She brings the phone to her ear, watches as Bellamy puts on his glasses and unfolds the paper. She’d say it makes him look old, but he’s been doing exactly this since he was sixteen. Abby answers after four rings. “Hello? Bellamy?”

“Hey, Mom. It’s me.”

Abby is silent. Then: “You’re home?”

“Yeah, Bellamy got into a car accident. Just wanted you to know I’m in town.”

Abby doesn’t reply. Clarke imagines her trying to piece all of this together, given how her relationship with the Blakes ended and how long it’s been.

Clarke adds, “And I need to reactivate my phone line.”

“Of course, yeah, I’ll have Jackson do that today. How is Bellamy doing?”

“He’s okay. Broken leg.”

Bellamy makes an annoyed sound.

“I’m going to be staying a while.”

“Sure,” Bellamy mutters as he turns the page.

“Great, good,” Abby says, “we should get lunch or something soon.”

“Yeah, definitely.”

Another silence. “Am I on speaker?”

“No.”

“I know you probably can’t say anything, but is everything okay? Last time you saw the Blakes —”

“Yeah, I know. It’s — I don’t know, really.”

“Okay, well. We can talk about it some other time. Send me an email or something. I’ll expedite shipping on the phone so you’ll have it by tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Sure. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

She hangs up. The doctor arrives soon after, and the pandemonium begins. The police show up. Bellamy has to file a report against the guy who hit him (who came out of the crash without a scratch). He then gets pushed around the hospital for a cast and crutch fitting, and a final MRI. At several points throughout the day, he’s too grouchy and snippy for the nurses to handle, so they defer to Clarke. One of them refers to her as his girlfriend and Clarke watches Bellamy’s jaw clench, but he doesn’t correct her. It shocks Clarke that they look close enough in age now to be misconstrued as a couple. She doesn’t think either of them look much different than they used to, but before, if she’d held hands with Bellamy in public, people would have stared.

They eat a terrible hospital lunch involving wilted kale and pineapple Jell-O. After that, they wait around for several more hours, seemingly for no reason, during which Bellamy dozes while Clarke reads _D-Day,_ mostly for Bellamy’s little margin notes, which are all pedagogical in nature, ways he’d present the material in class, ideas for group activities. Then finally, in the early evening, he gets cleared for release.

 

* * *

 

An orderly helps Bellamy into the Kia. When Clarke gets in the driver’s side and turns on the ignition, he says, “Do you even remember how to drive?”

“Yes,” she says tersely. Before she puts the car in reverse, she adds, “Are you okay? With being in a car again.”

“Being in a car again, yes. Being in a car with someone who doesn’t know how to drive, no.”

“I know how to drive.”

“Your three failed driver’s test attempts say otherwise.”

“Would you rather take the bus?” She’s trying to keep her cool — he’s tired, and in pain, and his ex-whatever is suddenly very in his life again against his wishes. She gets it, really. She just wishes he’d be a little less of a dick right now.

He closes his eyes, lets his head fall back, and she can see his age now, every day of thirty-three etched on his face. “I’m fine. Just go.”

The drive is silent and tense for several minutes, until he says, “I can’t believe this is the shirt you picked out for me.”

“I like it.”

“I haven’t worn it since I was a teenager.”

“Well you kept it, so you must still like it.”

“There was no conscious decision to keep it. You had to have gone through all of my drawers to find it.”

“Sure did.”

“Creepy.”

She doesn’t know why she says it, or why this particular memory pops into her head when she hasn’t thought about it in years. “Look who’s talking.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

“No, say it.”

“You think I’m creepy, but you’re the one who once abused your authority to stalk me and keep me away from my boyfriend.”

He pauses like he has no idea what she’s talking about. Then it clicks. “How do you even remember that? It was a decade ago.”

“Over seven years. What else have you forgotten?”

“Not nearly enough.”

“Are we really having this conversation now?”

“You brought it up. I’m more than happy with silence.”

“Fine,” she says.

“Fine,” he replies, and they both fall silent.

They pull into the garage, and when Clarke keys off the ignition, Bellamy is already opening the door and trying to climb out.

“Stop it,” she says, clambering out of her side and rushing around to his. “Stop. It.”

“I’m fine.” He leans dangerously out the passenger seat, his hand on the top of the door.

“Just wait a goddamn minute so I can get your crutches.”

He’s already swung his good leg out of the car, but the broken one is still inside. She opens the back seat and pulls out the crutches. He takes them from her reluctantly.

“Good leg first,” she says, “then slowly out, there you go.”

“I know how to use crutches, Clarke.”

He slides out too quickly and overcompensates, throwing off his balance. Clarke grabs his shoulder to keep him from falling. “For the love of god, we’re not in a hurry.”

He makes a pained grunting sound as his bad leg follows. Clarke doesn’t bother closing the door behind him, just follows him into the house, a steadying hand on the middle of his back. “I don’t need your help.”

“Whatever, Blake,” she says, watching his feet. “Show me you can put one foot in front of the other and I’ll believe you. Oh wait, you can’t.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you too.”

She opens the back door, follows him into the living room, and helps him get settled on the couch. He props his crutches beside him. Clarke pushes aside the coffee table and drags over a dining table chair, stacks a couple throw pillows on it, and lifts his leg on top of them. He winces as she does it, and she says, “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

She gets the rest of the stuff from the car, his duffel and prescriptions and her purse, and when she gets back inside, she falls onto the other side of the couch, exhausted. It’s already night outside.

“Okay,” she says, rallying. “Food.”

“I’m not hungry.”

She picks up the bag of pills and flips through the information booklet stapled to it. “You need to eat if you want to take another Oxy.”

“I’ll fix something myself.”

“You will not.”

“Clarke, look.” He makes actual sustained eye contact for the first time since she got back. “I’m sorry Octavia freaked out and made you come home, but I don’t need or want your help, okay? Go back to Argentina.”

“Chile.”

“Whatever.”

She tears off the little medical information booklet to read it properly.

“I’m serious,” he says. “Get out of my house.”

“Mhm.”

“Clarke.”

“Bellamy.”

“Get out.”

“Nope.”

“I’ll call the cops.”

She pulls his phone out of her pocket and tosses it on his lap. “Go for it.”

“I’ll drag you out of here myself if I have to.”

She glances at his bad leg. “Sure you will.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Your sister asked me to. Why are you being so mean to me?”

“Because it’s been _six years._ You’re a stranger in my fucking house, trying to take care of me, and it’s freaking me the hell out.”

That might have worked if it weren’t for the letter under his pillow. She can’t let his pain-addled dickishness deter her. “You’ve really gotten grouchy in your old age. Want me to mash up a banana for you, old man?”

Bellamy drops his head against the back of the couch, pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath. “You’re not staying here, Clarke.”

“Yes, I am. I’m going to stay as long as it takes for you to be able to physically drag me out, and if by then you still want me gone, I’ll go. But seeing as how there’s absolutely nothing you can do or say to make me leave you again, you need to tell me what you want to fucking eat.”

He crosses his arms over his chest like a child. It’s like looking in a mirror — one hundred percent a Clarke Griffin move.

“There’s some leftover curry in the fridge,” he says. “You can have some too.”

“Thank you,” she says, and gets up to reheat it.

 

* * *

 

After dinner, he calls Octavia. Clarke overhears the conversation. It isn’t pretty. She wonders what happened between them, and fears the worst: her relationship with Bellamy shattered Octavia’s trust so profoundly that their bond has turned — slowly, over many years — into this, speaking to each other like business associates in clipped, bland phrases. No “Love you, O,” at the end of the phone call, just “Talk to you tomorrow,” and he hangs up.

Thankfully the pain and sleep meds together make him a little more pliant when bedtime arrives. She helps him pull off his t-shirt to avoid his stitches and get settled in bed, props a few pillows from the closet under his leg. Neither of them mentions the map hidden behind the door, or her letter under his pillow. He makes a face when he notices his empty laundry hamper.

“Did you do my laundry?” he asks.

She pulls the comforter over him. “I did.”

“You know how to do laundry now?”

“Every way possible. Machine, washboard, a really cool rock.”

“You did your laundry with a rock?”

“You kind of have to, like, beat it against a rock to get the dirt out, and it has to be by a river, but yeah.”

“That sounds counterintuitive.”

“And yet, it’s not.” She sits at the edge of the bed, careful not to touch him, appreciating his calmness but scared he’ll tell her to leave. “On the road there were always washing machines, laundromats. But in Peru I had to wash my clothes by hand. For an entire year.”

Her heart thumps in her chest. She snaps and unsnaps the pocket of her cargo pants, wondering if he’ll bring up the letter. She can feel it between them, unacknowledged but still very present. Heavy. He has to know she found it, that he read it over and over; that she found the map, too, and the way he meticulously pinned up her postcards, forged her path with string.

He clears his throat, pauses like he wants to say something, but thinks better of it. He’s back to not looking at her, actively avoiding looking at her, like he can’t bear the sight of her. He really is a stranger, she thinks — she’s been speaking to him from a distance for years, but he hasn’t spoken back. She doesn’t know what kind of person he is anymore. What if he's actually the grumpy asshole all the nurses hated? What if he’s jaded now, cruel for the sake of cruelty? What if he’s a Republican?

“You’re not a Republican, are you?” she asks, because now that she’s thought it, she can’t not ask.

He seems taken aback by the question. “I possess basic human empathy, Clarke. Of course I’m not a Republican.”

“Okay, just making sure.”

“Do I seem like a Republican?”

“No. You don’t seem like anything. You’re hard to read now. Not that you were ever easy to read, I guess.” She shifts uncomfortably, wipes her clammy palms on her thighs. “I thought you’d be happy to see me. I can’t really tell why you’re —” She makes a hand gesture over him. “You know. Mad about it.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” he says, as if it’s obvious.

“Still doesn’t explain it.”

“You got out, Clarke. You went and you did something with your life, something cool and amazing, and you got a girlfriend, and — and Peru.” _Peru_ seems to be code for the letter, which she guesses they’re still not talking about. “And I get in a stupid car accident and suddenly it’s over? Yeah, I’m mad. I’m mad at Octavia for asking you to come back. I’m mad at myself for not having anyone else in my life who can help me. And I’m mad at you for, you know, Peru.”

“You’re mad about Peru?”

“Of course I’m mad about Peru.”

“I was hoping you’d enjoy Peru.”

“Not after what I —” He interrupts himself, changes course. “You were supposed to forget about me.”

She can’t stand this stupid game anymore. “Are you still punishing yourself over something that happened almost a decade ago? Is that why you still live here? Is that why you’re alone? Penance?”

He ignores the question. “What are you doing, Clarke? I mean really, why are you here?”

He still won’t look at her, has his eyes trained down like if he avoids her long enough, she’ll disappear. She takes his chin and forces it up, definitely something she learned from Lexa, waits until he focuses on her, but his eyes are glazed-over and tired from his meds. Now isn’t the time for this discussion, and as much as she wants to pick at it all night until the topic finally breaks, she knows he needs to rest.

“You know what I’m doing,” she says, “and you know why I’m here.”

She leans down and kisses his cheek, lingers there just a second to revel in their momentary closeness: his stubble against her lips, breath held in his chest, tension woven between them so tightly it’s as if the air itself might break. She lets her fingers trail down his neck. Goosebumps rise over his skin in the wake of her touch.

When she pulls away, he finally exhales. His eyes are closed. He loosens his grip on the blanket.

“Goodnight, Bellamy.”

 

* * *

 

The next morning, before Bellamy wakes up, Clarke tackles the scary coffee pot, made easier by finding the manual in a three-ring binder under the coffee table where Bellamy keeps the manuals for every single thing in the house, including the emulsion blender (which seems pretty self-explanatory, as far as kitchen gadgets are concerned), the wifi information, a very thorough neighborhood contact list, and takeout menus, all organized between color-coded tab dividers. The manual tells her to grind the beans with the grinder attached to the machine, which seems ridiculous to her, grinding beans every day. Then again, she only drank tea abroad, had the occasional instant coffee, or the extremely occasional flat white. While the coffee is brewing, she makes an omelette the way Luna taught her, the French way, by curling the eggs to the very edge of the pan. She fixes some bacon too, along with toast from organic whole grain bread that looks like it came from an actual bakery, instead of what the Blakes used to buy, fifty-cent Wonder Bread from the discount bread place by the train tracks. The change is up there with the lack of two-percent milk, and she’s going to need to talk to him about it, because there are just certain staples she needs now that she’s home again, shitty bread and real milk being very high on the list. She finds the little lap tray they always used to bring Aurora breakfast in bed on her birthday and Mother’s Day, and puts the meal together on it, along with his medication and newspaper.

She opens his bedroom door and wakes him up with a soft, “Hey.”

He groans a little, rubs his eyes with one hand, catches his stitches and winces. It takes him a second to come to, see the cast and register whatever amount of pain he’s in. Then he notices Clarke, and for a second it’s like she hasn’t been gone for years, like this is a totally normal morning, and he’s happy to see her. He even smiles a little. “Hey.”

She lifts the tray. “Made you breakfast.”

He pushes himself upright, props his pillows against the headboard, and puts on his glasses. She sets the tray over his lap.

“You know how to cook now?” His voice is deep and scratchy, much worse than his morning voice used to be. Must be a change that comes with age.

“Not really. Just a few things I picked up.”

“An omelette?” He stares down at it in disbelief. “You can make omelettes?”

“I learned in France. Lexa’s cousin taught me.” She bites her tongue at the mention of Lexa, covers up the blip of awkwardness by going to his window and opening the curtains. He’s silent as he eats. She can read him loud and clear: no coffee in his system yet, in pain. Grouchiness nigh.

“I’ll leave you to it,” she says. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“You can stay.”

“Really?”

He shrugs with the shoulder of his good arm. “You can tell me about traveling or whatever. What’d you eat on the road?”

She climbs onto the other side of his bed and sits cross-legged to watch him eat. It’s not like his old room where his bed was propped against the wall; now it’s in the middle, which means that somebody else is sometimes in it who needs to climb off the other side. She wonders if he’s on Tinder, either doing the hookup thing or looking for a real relationship.

“It was different everywhere,” she says. “Mostly we bought whatever vegetables we found in season wherever we were, and cooked them with what was around. Sometimes at hostels people leave behind pans and things for other people to use, olive oil and butter and stuff like that. But if we were stuck on the road, we had to build a fire. Sometimes we just ate whatever we had raw, which was fine, I mean, food is food. I tried to carry bread with me for the first few months, because it was filling and went with everything and I felt like it rounded out an otherwise lacking meal, but I realized it took up too much space in my bag for what it was worth nutritionally. Never noticed my attachment to carbs until I had to give them up. And things like meat and chocolate and anything with sugar were major luxuries. We only got them when people invited us into their homes, which happened way more often than you’d expect. People are really kind. They love showing you how they live, what their lives are like.”

“I can’t imagine it,” Bellamy says. “You, in Kazakhstan or wherever, on the side of some dirt road, building a fire. Beating your laundry against rocks. Carrying everything you own on your back.”

She wants to tell him the ridiculousness of it, that they chose to do all of it for the experience, that at any moment, if it became too much to deal with, they could have whipped Abby’s credit card out and called it quits, and how that option alone made it just an adventure, fun rather than terrifying and arduous. How hard it is to resolve that conflict: wanderlust, a natural human instinct, in a world where so few people get to fulfill it. She slept in the homes of people who didn’t make in a year what Abby makes in a day, people who offered her their food and time and charity. Lexa never seemed to register the hypocrisy, but Clarke’s bullshit sirens were going off constantly. She was always just a princess abroad. Bellamy doesn’t want to hear that, though; that would mean she hasn’t changed at all, that she’s not worldly or wise or grown-up, that she’s still the same spoiled brat he grew up with. She doesn’t want to be that to him anymore.

As if reading her mind, he says, “You’re so different now.”

“I am?”

“First of all, look at you.”

She looks down at herself. Cargo pants and a tank top, which is basically all she wears now.

“Your hair, for one.”

She cut all her hair off in India when she got tired of how much maintenance it took. Lexa wanted both of them to get dreads but Clarke told her she’d sooner shave her own head. She had no idea how anyone could be so aware of patriarchy, misogyny, and heteronormativity, yet so utterly blind to racism. That was when Lexa started wearing a bindi.

“Well, yeah,” she says. “Kind of a necessity.”

“And you don’t —” He waves his fork in a circular motion around her. “— hold yourself the same way.”

She glances at his coffee cup. Half empty now, which means the grouchiness meter is lowering. His pain meds have maybe started to kick in, too.

“How so?”

“You used to fidget all the time, like you had more energy than your body could expend. And now you’re like. You’re so...still. Calm. It’s kind of freaking me out.”

“Sorry?”

“I’m not trying to be mean. It’s a compliment. I think. I’m still adjusting.”

“You’re different too, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s hard to pin down. You seem really sad.”

“Totalling your most prized possession and breaking your leg in three places will do that to you.”

“It’s not that. It feels like something — I don’t know. Deeper, I guess.”

“You a mind reader now?”

She sighs. “Nevermind.”

He tears off a bite of toast. Chews thoughtfully. “You’re right, kind of. This last year has been really, really hard. I was doing okay until, you know, Peru.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. It just made me realize — it takes two people to live a life, you know? Everyone needs a person to be there for them, whatever form that takes. Everyone needs a family, in the loosest definition of the word. This just proves it.” He gestures to his leg. “You need an emergency contact. You need to name a beneficiary on your accounts. You need someone who knows your Social Security number, your passwords, your daily routine, who loves you enough to make decisions on your behalf when you can’t. Complete independence is a farce. No one should have to go it alone forever, not even me. And I’m sick of pretending I can. I’m sick of thinking I’m a monster not worth being loved.”

They’re finally talking about this. God bless pain meds, she thinks.

“You’re not a monster.”

“After I got your letter —” He stops. She holds her breath, poised somewhere between wanting to cheer or throw up. His toast is shaking in his trembling hand, so he sets it down. “I read it. And I didn’t — I couldn’t — it didn’t make sense. I thought it was a prank. Like maybe one of my students found out about you, I don’t know. Maybe O had turned sadistic. But it was your handwriting. It was postmarked from Peru. I couldn’t sleep that night at all. I got up at three in the morning to get a glass of water and I thought — no one knows where I am right now. And even though the house was completely empty, I still kept the lights off. Still stayed quiet. As if there was someone around to disturb, who might ask me in the morning what I was doing up so late. And that was when I thought, I can’t live like this anymore.”

“But you didn’t reach out.”

“What would I have said? ‘Dear Clarke, your postcards are the only thing I look forward to. Your letter sent me into a spiral I can’t climb out of. Please help.’ If I did that, you would’ve come home, and I’d have felt terrible about it, and —”

“We would have worked it out. We _can_ work this out.”

“Still an optimist.”

“Not an optimist. Just someone who gets shit done.”

“What needs done?”

“You need to forgive yourself, for one.”

“I can’t forgive myself until you forgive me, and to do that I would need to apologize, and I’m not ready for that yet. This — this still feels too new. Too fucking weird. Surreal.”

She can concede to that, at least. “Yeah, okay. We have time. We don’t have to talk about everything now.”

He purses his lips slightly as if to hold down a smile.

“What?” she asks.

“I thought you'd become a lot of things one day, but patient was never one of them.”

“Shut up.”

He picks up his fork again. She watches him eat. It feels like a thread of the tension from last night has become untangled, even if the knot is still present.

“How is it?” she asks.

“Good. No one’s made me breakfast in — come to think of it, no one’s ever made me breakfast.”

The thought makes her unbearably sad. All the times he cooked her breakfast (and lunch, and dinner, and took her out for ice cream on bad days, and made sure she never went hungry), and she’s never thought to return the favor. It was something Bellamy just did, like it was his divine task to feed her, when she was never his responsibility at all.

“Well, get ready for weeks of my fantastic cooking, featuring every roasted vegetable imaginable, and fifteen kinds of granola.”

He smiles at that, doesn’t deny it. It’s a start, at least. A bit of hope she can hold onto. A seed from a dead plant that might grow into something new.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end note for warnings.

Clarke falls onto Bellamy’s bed and slings an arm over her eyes. “We have so much to do.”

Bellamy is propped up playing a video game with a lot of zombies in it. He pauses and puts the controller down. “Like what?”

Octavia is flying in tomorrow morning. It’s only Clarke’s fourth day back in Arcadia and her internal clock has already returned to midwestern time, which is to say, everything moves very, very slowly, and she gets tired at eight p.m.

She ticks items off on her fingers. “I need to call the cell phone company and reactivate my line, go to the grocery and buy food Octavia will actually eat, clean the kitchen, call my mom and figure out if it’s more cost-effective to keep renting the Kia or lease a car, and renew my driver’s license. You need to call the body shop and figure out what’s happening with your truck, talk to my lawyer, and take a bath. You’re gross.”

“You like it when I’m gross.”

It’s true. Bellamy is one of those people who smells and looks good all the time, even when he’s disgusting. It’s infuriating.

“Octavia doesn’t, and she’ll be here in less than twenty-four hours.”

His mouth forms a hard line.

“You’re either taking a bath tonight or I’m tossing you head-first into the pool.”

“I got rid of the pool.”

“Then I will buy a pool and throw you in it.”

“You’re really staying long enough to get a car?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“You don’t have, like, places to be? The road isn’t calling you?”

“The road has never called me. It’s more like, we fucked and I never heard from it again, and I’ve been chasing it down ever since. So I have to learn to accept that maybe the road doesn’t want me.”

“Still,” he says, “I’m just saying, you don’t have to stay.”

Clarke plays with a loose thread on the comforter. “What if I want to stay?”

“There’s no reason to.”

“I’d say there’s a big reason. A six-foot-tall, freckled, broken-legged reason.”

“Don’t flirt with me.”

“Are you going to stop me?”

He purses his lips in an attempt to look stern, but fails. “Yes.”

“How?”

Before she can defend herself, he reaches out and tickles her, right below her ribcage. She shouts in surprise, and when she tries to writhe away, he drags her back in, hands on either side of her, and she’s trapped against his chest, laughing and screaming, and can’t fight back because he’s too injured, which is exactly why he’s doing it: she’s totally defenseless.

“Stop it, stop it, I yield. I’ll never flirt again. Just stop,” she says, and he finally does. Now he’s half on top of her, staring down, actually smiling for once. His warm rough hand has made its way under her shirt, clutching her waist. He rubs his thumb back and forth across her skin, like he used to.

She reaches up and brushes a lock of hair out of his eyes, tucks it behind his ear.

“God I missed you,” he says.

They haven’t talked about Peru since breakfast yesterday. Every hour, Bellamy seems to open up a little more. He’s been asking questions about her life, filling in details about his, mostly faculty gossip —  the new biology teacher is having an affair with the assistant principal, he’s sure of it. He has a surprisingly long and complicated story about how he replaced the furnace a couple years ago, which prompted him to speak for the longest he has yet, and a long list of repairs he’s made to the house to increase its value. He did not conclude with his intention to sell it, but Clarke thinks that might have been the implication. He’s the boys’ basketball coach now, and attributes his being on blood pressure medication to it. His life seems busy, but not full. He’s still having pretty drastic mood swings, one minute seeming totally okay, even happy, and the next clouded-over and irate, and she can’t tell if that’s just how he is now or if it’s because of the pain he’s in, a side effect of the meds, the fact she’s here and he’s not dealing with his emotions very well. Maybe all of the above. Or, she thinks, he might need more help than he’s letting on.

She keeps her hand on the side of his face. “I missed you, too.”

“I feel like I don’t know you anymore.”

“You’ll have plenty of time to get to know me.”

“You’re really going to stay.”

“I’m really going to stay.”

A flicker of uncertainty crosses his face. For a second he looks twenty-five again and hungry for her. Like she’s seventeen and asking for a kiss, and he’s eager to comply. His gaze moves to her lips; his hand slips to her lower back. He touches her like he wants to devour her.

“I thought about you every day,” he says.

“You did?”

“I wondered where you were, how you were. The first few years, I used to sit in my truck and have to talk myself out of driving to Columbus to see you. About a million almost-phone-calls. Even more erased texts.”

“What stopped you?”

“I already wronged you once by giving in. I wasn’t going to do it again.”

“And now?” Her voice dips lower. Her fingers trail down his jaw, over his bottom lip. “Will you give in?”

“Getting harder not to.”

How easy it would be to bring his mouth down to hers. Concede to this feeling, lose the past, and, like Lexa always wanted of her, appreciate the present simply, for exactly what it is.

But she can’t appreciate the present, simply or otherwise, because Bellamy’s phone goes off. "Mambo Number Five" by Lou Bega, the song Octavia set her number to a decade ago. 

“That's O,” he says, like she wouldn't remember, which kind of hurts her feelings. He rolls off her and roots around on his bedside table, finds his phone and slides his thumb across. “Hey.”

Clarke climbs off the bed, smooths her hair, pulls her shirt down. Her knees feel a little watery. She can hear Octavia through the tinny receiver of the phone, talking a mile a minute.

 _Grocery,_  Clarke mouths, and he nods.

 

* * *

 

“Get out,” Bellamy says. He’s sitting on the closed toilet lid. The faucet in the bath is running, steam coiling up to the ceiling. Bubbles rise into mountains, the mirror is getting foggy, and Bellamy has a towel around his hips because he won’t let her help him into the tub. His cast is wrapped in a big fancy bag the hospital gave him to keep it from getting wet.

He’s back to grouchy Bellamy now, and she thinks it has something to do with Octavia flying in tomorrow morning, and the fact his evening meds haven’t kicked in yet. The mental gymnastics she has to do to keep up with his mood are exhausting. Earlier, he had been visibly dismayed by her grocery choices. Of the two-percent milk, he said, “Everyone is lactose intolerant now, Clarke.” Lucky Charms: “How old are you?” Oreos: “This has always been a Double-Stuf household and I’d thank you to remember that.” Produce: “None of this is organic.” Regular grade-A white eggs: “Think of the _chickens.”_ And lastly, pink, fancy-smelling bubble bath: “Don’t infantilize me,” to which she replied — while imagining strangling him with one of his reusable canvas grocery totes — “You fucking hypocrite.”

Now, two hours later, he’s still mad about that and taking it out on her by being irrationally stubborn about bathtime.

“I refuse to leave you to your own devices,” she says, hip propped against the sink. “You’ll re-break your leg.”

“There’s no way I’m letting you help me bathe.”

“I won’t help you bathe. I’m making sure you get into the tub okay, then I’ll leave, then I’ll help you get back out.”

“I can do it myself.”

“How? Tell me exactly how you plan to do it and I’ll consider it.”

He looks at the tub, and apparently tries, but fails, to form a game plan.

“There’s nothing to hold onto,” she says. “You need at least another hand.”

“No.”

She makes a frustrated noise through her teeth. Then, a divine spark of inspiration: she pulls the hem of her tank top and lifts it over her head.

“What are you doing?” he asks, immediately averting his gaze.

She reaches back and unclasps her bra, lets it falls down her arms. She drops it to the floor. “I’m getting in with you.”

“We can’t both fit in there.”

“Sure we can.”

“Clarke.” He’s looking so far in the other direction it looks like he’s about to twist his own head off.

She drops her pants and underwear in one go and kicks them off. Now she’s naked in front of him. “Look at me.”

“No.”

“Bellamy.” She grabs his hand and puts it on her hip. “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”

Finally he looks up at her, only her face at first, then, seemingly losing an internal battle with his willpower, trails his eyes down. His concerned-face wrinkle creases between his brows. He squeezes her hip, then down to her thigh, and squeezes harder.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispers.

“What?”

“You used to be soft. Now it’s like — if a car hit you, you’d break it.”

“Benefits of hauling a fifty-kilo pack around the world.”

He pinches her tummy fat. “That hasn’t changed.”

“Stop it.” She swats his hand away. “That’s where I keep my bees.”

He drags her toward him, between his knees, presses his mouth against her stomach and drops a kiss there, beard rough against her skin. He slides his hands up the back of her thighs, stops short of her ass.

“Another thing that hasn’t changed,” he says, propping his chin on her stomach as he looks up at her. “You are still so goddamn beautiful.”

“Don’t distract me.” She pulls herself away from him, steps into the tub and turns off the water. “We’re doing this whether you like it or not.”

“Well I like it _now.”_

“If I knew all I had to do to get you to cooperate was take off my clothes, I would have been naked this whole time.”

“Remind me to throw a fit more often.”

“What happened to no flirting?”

“Not flirting, just fact.”

“Get in the tub, Blake.”

 

* * *

 

Bellamy’s back is to her, settled into the V of her legs. His cast is propped against the side of the tub. It’s a tight squeeze, but surprisingly comfortable. They’re done with the bathing part, which felt, more than anything else yet, normal: his soapy hair between her fingers, wet skin, the graceful movement of their bodies in a tight space, all painfully familiar.

They should get out before the water grows cold. Clarke needs to go to bed so she can wake up at ungodly o’clock and pick up Octavia from the airport. But moving would require breaking the moment of peace they’ve managed to conjure — even if it is pain-med induced — and she won’t have that, not yet anyway. She’s earned this.

She combs her fingers through his now-clean and conditioned hair, traces a line of silver from its root. “You’re going grey already.”

“Students still think I’m hot.”

“Yeah?”

“I overheard one girl saying she wanted me to ‘raw her.’ When she noticed I’d heard, she looked like she was ready to die.”

“And you said something like, ‘Maybe when you’re older.’”

“Of course not. That’s completely inappropriate.” He pauses. “I winked at her.”

When Clarke scoffs, he adds, “Teasing eighteen-year-olds is one of the few things that brings me joy in life.”

“Please tell me you haven’t fucked any of your students.”

“Just the one. Lesson learned.”

She’s glad he can’t see the redness that seeps into her cheeks. “Do you fuck anyone, anymore?”

“What are you asking, princess?”

 _Princess._ She almost forgot. It’s been so long since he’s called her that. The word still slips from his lips as easily as it always has, equal parts disparaging and affectionate.

“I’m asking if you’re seeing anyone.”

“Would I be taking a bath with my ex-girlfriend if I were?”

 _Girlfriend._ He’s killing her. Christ.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a casual thing.”

“No,” he admits. “No casual things. No serious things. No things since Echo. I’m too old for things.”

She wraps her arms around him, presses her face into the crook of his shoulder, kisses his warm wet skin. He lets out a breath that sounds surprised, a little strained, so she kisses him again behind his ear. She wants to run her palm down his stomach, touch him, make him feel good. Pick up where they left off. The instinct is so strong that she has to close her eyes, find her center, ground herself.

“Can I ask you something?” she says.

“Sure.” He sounds grateful for the interruption.

“What happened with Echo?”

He shrugs almost imperceptibly, just a twitch of a single shoulder like it’s not a big deal, plays with the bubbles in front of him and shapes them into a cone. “We were together four years. She lived here for two. Then we broke up.”

“Why?”

“We wanted different things.”

“What did she want?”

“My complete loyalty and devotion.”

“And what did you want?”

He lowers his hands into the water, on top of hers, rests his head back against her shoulder.

“You.”

She can feel his heart pounding under her palm. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “What about Lexa?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We have until the water gets cold.”

She lets her hand trail down with his, over his stomach, nails tracing the line of his hip, careful not to touch anything she shouldn’t but getting as close as she dares. She enjoys the little hitches she can hear in his breath. “On paper, she wanted to go to Africa and I wanted to go to South America, but I think she would have followed me if I’d given her a reason to. I think she thought if we were together long enough, if she showed me enough of the world, she could earn my whole heart. Eventually she figured it out, that I’d always have someone to go home to, someone I missed every day and whose absence framed my whole life. But she didn’t, she was always being pulled by a greater force and I was just along for the ride. I think that’s what kept us apart.”

“Is that my fault?” His voice comes out thick; she wishes she could see through the bubbles, if he’s hard. Stroke him languidly as she spoke in his ear.

“No,” she says. “Or I guess, it’s about you, but it’s not your fault. Can you imagine going far away and not missing home? Not having a home to miss? It’s an awful feeling. I met so many people like that, completely untethered, like they didn’t belong anywhere. They were all searching for something. It seemed like they were trapped by their aloneness, but I was free because I knew where I belonged.”

“Where’s that?”

She smiles into his neck, wraps both arms around him and hugs him close.  “In a bathtub with the crankiest history teacher in the world.”

He fills the water cup and lifts it behind him, pours it over her head. She yelps, and they soak the entire bathroom in the resulting splash fight.

 

* * *

 

Clarke gets to the airport half an hour early and waits in the car in front of arrivals, where several security guards order her to move along. She tells them, “Okay, sure,” then doesn’t move. She uses the time to play with her new phone and re-download all the apps she used to have, check Facebook and Instagram for the first time in almost three years. She takes a selfie with her tongue out, peace sign up, slaps a filter on it, and adds the caption, _Stateside, bitches,_ followed by the American flag and fireworks emojis. She forgot how addictive phones are — the second she gets bored and puts it down, she picks it up again mindlessly to see if anyone liked her post. She remembers why Lexa wanted to ditch them for burners.

Finally Octavia comes out of the airport, rolling suitcase behind her, what looks like an actual Coach bag over her arm, and spiked high heels. She’s wearing a stylish leather jacket with tight-fitting black slacks, a button-up white blouse, and full contour. In LA she probably looks normal, but in Ohio it’s bizarre; people around her are turning to stare. Clarke meets her on the passenger side of the car.

“Hey!” she says excitedly, lifting her arms for a hug. “It’s so good to see you.”

“You too,” Octavia says, returning the hug in a polite, formal way.

Clarke takes her suitcase and puts it in the back seat. “How was your flight?”

“Fine.”

They climb into the car, hit the road, and fall into silence. Clarke itches to turn on some music, lower the awkwardness level, but she forces herself to be brave.

“I don’t think I caught what you do now, exactly,” she says. “You mentioned a big prospect but I’m not sure for what.”

“My partner Lincoln and I own a social media marketing startup.”

“Oh, wow.”

“The prospect was the Academy actually.”

“The Academy? Like, the Oscars?”

“Mhm.”

“Wow. And you got the job?”

“Yep. Biggest client to date. I tried to explain that to Bellamy, but he was still butt-hurt about it. He’s being a baby. It’s not like he’s dying.”

Again, Clarke doesn’t know anything about their relationship to justify Bellamy’s upsetness. She can see both sides of the coin.

“Mind if I smoke?” Octavia asks.

“Go ahead.”

She pulls a box of Golds out of her purse and lights one with an orange Bic, taps the window down a crack.

“What about you?” she asks. “What have you been up to?”

“I was in Peru. Teaching art. Well, not when you emailed me. I had moved on by then. I was in Chile.”

“Cool,” Octavia says blandly. She takes another drag. Stares out the window and watches cornfields pass. “And you had a girlfriend for a while.”

“Yeah. Lexa. We broke up about a year ago.”

Octavia makes a disinterested sound. “So you’re single and you’ve been home five days. Have you fucked my brother again yet?”

“Just get right to the point, don’t you,” Clarke says, staving off a grimace, clenching the wheel harder in her fists.

“Is that a yes?”

“Nothing’s happened.” She hesitates. “No, that’s not true, we took a bath together. Platonically.”

“How can you take a platonic bath?”

“You and I used to do it all the time.”

“We were five.”

“I don’t know. He was being a dick about it. He wouldn’t let me help him in, so I got in first.”

“And he followed. Like he always does, because he’s weak for you.”

“Why did you ask me to come then? If you thought I’d pounce on your brother the second I got him alone?”

“I panicked.”

“Really says a lot, though, that you panicked and thought of me. That tells me —” She stops herself. “Nevermind.”

“Can’t make this worse than it already is, Clarke. Say it.”

“It makes me think you still think about me, and you don’t hate me as much as you let on. You can’t hold a grudge against someone for seven years without caring about them, as fucked-up as that sounds.”

Octavia takes a long drag from her cigarette. “You’re right.” She flicks the ash out the crack in her window. “It is fucked-up.”

 

* * *

 

Clarke speeds home mostly because the silence is agonizing. Eventually and thankfully, Octavia falls asleep. She wakes up again when Clarke pulls into the garage, and gets out without saying anything like an Uber ride. Clarke follows her inside, where Bellamy is on the couch reading the newspaper.

“You made me come home for this?” Octavia asks him. “It’s just a scratch. I’m going back to LA.”

Bellamy turns the page. “Good.”

Clarke is standing in the doorway, barely breathing. She thinks Octavia might go off, or lock herself in her room, or who knows what, but then she rolls her eyes and half-smiles, and Bellamy puts down his paper and says, “I almost died, do I get a hug or what?”

Octavia drops her bag and leans down and hugs him. When she pulls away, she says, “What’d they give you, Percocet? Tramadol?”

“Oxys.”

“Nice.”

He picks up the paper again. “How’s your car running?”

Octavia drops onto the couch. “You’d have to ask Lincoln. He takes care of all that.”

Clarke takes that as her cue to pretend to have something to do. “I’m gonna go...run some errands. You guys want anything while I’m out?”

“You need to take responsibility for your own car,” Bellamy says.

“Why should I when I have a boyfriend who does it for me?”

“I’ll take that as a no,” Clarke says, and ducks back out into the garage.

 

* * *

 

There’s a lot of awkwardness when it comes to travel. Getting used to new customs and cultures. Intermittent traveler’s gut. Extremely close quarters. Sleeping in warehouse-esque hostels with dozens of people on uncomfortable bunks. Navigating public transport. Miscommunication via language barrier. But nothing, literally nothing, is as awkward as the first day with Octavia.

Clarke feels the worst for Bellamy, who is physically trapped. Over the past few days, they’ve developed a bit of a routine, her getting things for him, polite albeit somewhat strained small talk, figuring out meals together. She’s felt pretty comfortable being the caretaker around the house, has had no problems at all staying on top of the chores, and while she knows it’s hard for Bellamy to be taken care of, she’s grateful for the speedy harmony they’ve built, as nebulous as it feels.

In just the first few hours with Octavia, all that comfort has gone to hell. If Clarke thought Bellamy had become grouchy, it’s nothing compared to his sister. She’s no longer a bubbly cheerleader but a goddamn Marine. Her arms are covered in tattoos. She looks like she’s made of bronze. Around noon she puts on a bluetooth and makes a workstation in the dining room, which includes a laptop, iPad, and her cell phone, all working together somehow. She can take a phone call and type an email at the same time. She speaks to everyone the exact same way, in a distant-sounding monotone like she’s recording a voicemail. She types faster than Clarke can think. By Clarke’s count, she’s had seven cups of coffee.

Clarke is on the couch with Bellamy, Spanish  _Breaking Dawn_ in her lap, afraid to move or make any noise in case it might disturb Octavia. It’s so surreal to be back in the bungalow with both of the Blakes that Clarke can’t focus on the words in front of her. She can’t get past how weird it feels to be here again, the three of them, in a stilted kind of silence. She imagines how different things would have been if she’d made different choices along the way. If she’d never pursued Bellamy, would they still be here this very moment, together sans tension? Would Octavia have joined the Marines if she and Clarke had gone to OSU together? Would she have moved to LA if they had never betrayed her?

Bellamy pulls out his phone and types something, then nods to Clarke’s phone. It lights up. His first text to her in over six years.

_She got diagnosed with ADD a few years back. She’s on adderall now. You don’t have to be afraid of her._

Clarke replies, _She still hates me. And she looks like she could crush me in her fist._

_Once she closes her laptop she’s going to go out back and get high. She’ll be a lot easier to talk to later tonight._

_You’re not suggesting I try to make amends? I said like 2 things on the drive here and she accused me of coming home just to fuck you._

_You mean you didn’t??_

She looks up from her phone, nonplussed. He’s smiling smugly. She refuses to think it’s cute.

 _What HAPPENED to her,_ Clarke says.

_The marines. LA. Mom dying._

_It’s not because of us is it?_

Clarke watches him hesitate over the keypad, then he types for a long time.

_I don’t think so but. There’s no telling. Everything kind of happened all at once so it’s hard to pull apart. She doesn’t seem like it but she’s happy. I think._

_You guys aren’t like you used to be._ She’s glad to be able to avoid Bellamy’s gaze.

_None of us are like we used to be._

_You know what I mean._

Instead of elaborating, he only says, _Wait until after dinner. It’ll get easier._

 _Speaking of,_ Clarke replies. _What should I make?_

Even though Octavia has her back to them, she says, “I know you’re texting each other about me.”

Clarke stares at Bellamy wide-eyed and terrified. She mouths, _What the fuck?_

He gives her a half-bewildered, half-apologetic expression, then to Octavia, he says, “We were discussing dinner. What sounds good?”

“Pizza,” she says, in the same scary monotone as her phone calls. “I’ll buy.”

 

* * *

 

Bellamy was right. The second Octavia closes her laptop, she gets up, stretches (her joints pop so loudly the sound echoes in the house), and goes onto the deck, purse on her elbow. Once she closes the sliding glass door behind her, Bellamy says, “Well that could have been worse.”

“Jesus," Clarke breathes, her first full breath in hours.

“And you thought I was bad.”

Aurora’s disposition makes a lot more sense now, at least. She was never rude or cruel, but she was a very stern woman with remarkably little patience. It must be genetic.

“What do I even say to her?” Clarke asks.

“‘I’m here because you asked me to be, not because I still have feelings for your brother’?”

“You want me to lie?”

Bellamy ducks his head and plays with the bookmark slotted into the spine of his book, a gas station receipt with all the lettering worn off. “You shouldn’t lie, no,” he says quietly. “But the truth —” He closes the book, runs his hand over the cover. A library hardback, thick. Clarke doesn’t catch the title. “The truth might piss her off.”

 

* * *

 

Clarke sneaks out onto the back patio with a couple glasses of lemonade. She left one for Bellamy on her way out, which he lifted in cheers and said, “Godspeed.”

She puts one glass on the table in front of Octavia and holds the other, pulls up a chair and takes a seat. She hasn’t been out back since she got home — the pool has been replaced with a big patch of grass mown in a pleasing crosshatch pattern. Pansies line the deck in long planters. In the corner is a large pot with chicken wire raised out of it, what she guesses will soon be a tomato plant. Bellamy had mentioned this yesterday, that he gardens now. She hasn’t checked yet, but on the side of the house is a raised planter with some vegetables and herbs. It rained just before she got here so she hasn’t had to water, but she’ll offer to tomorrow, knowing Bellamy will come out on the deck with her and order her around to make sure she does the task to his exact specifications. An image crosses her mind: planting a garden with Bellamy a year from now. Together at a hardware store, deciding between marigolds and petunias. Taking a risk planting strawberries, knowing rabbits will probably get to them before they can be picked. Wondering if they should upgrade the patio furniture. Maybe they’ll have a dog by then.

Octavia is staring down at her phone, texting with one hand with a joint between two fingers of her other. “Thanks,” she says, about the lemonade.

“No problem. I made it myself,” she says. “From lemons.”

Octavia sends the text and rests her phone face-down on her thigh. Her feet are propped up on another chair. She takes a hit from the joint and holds it in her lungs. She’s changed into a tank top and cutoffs from her earlier business attire, which allows Clarke to take a longer look at her tattoos. _Semper Fi_ on her wrist. A sleeve on her other arm that looks like a swirl of feathers leading up to her shoulder and ending in the head of a sparrow. Red and pink and orange, sparks of teal.

Octavia exhales, passes the joint to Clarke, and says, “Let’s get this over with.”

Clarke takes a small hit. She didn’t think weed could taste distinctly American but somehow it does. “Get what over with?” She breathes out, hands the joint back.

“All of it. Let’s get it all out. You go first.”

“I don’t —”

“Don’t be a chickenshit, Clarke.”

“I was going to say I don’t know where to start. It’s really good to see you?”

“You’ve been all over the world, and you’re starting this conversation with a platitude? Do better.”

“I’m sorry?”

She makes a buzzer sound. “You apologized a long time ago. Still haven’t forgiven you. Next.”

It might be the waning jet lag, or the tension she’s felt all day, or just the weirdness of it all, but Clarke snaps. “Fuck you, Octavia. Seriously. Quit the fucking tough bitch act and talk to me like a person.”

“There we go. Knew you had it in you.”

“I don’t know what crawled up your snatch and died, but I came all the way from the bottom of South America to be here for your brother because _you_ had a fucking _meeting_ to go to. _You’re_ the one who asked me to be here, and now you’re treating me like shit. Get over yourself.”

Octavia throws her head back and laughs. Clarke has never been more terrified of anyone in her life.

“Stop laughing at me,” Clarke says.

“I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at —” She makes a grandiose hand gesture. “Everything. Our entire lives.”

“I don’t think our lives are that funny.”

“They _are_ though, in a way that’s like, if you don’t laugh you’ll weep.” Her phone beeps and she picks it up and checks it, sends something short in reply, and puts it back down. “You know, Lincoln is the most well-adjusted person I know. His mom is a therapist and his dad is a dentist. Both sets of his grandparents are still alive. He has an MFA in poetry from UC Irvine. When we started dating, I told him everything that happened, and you want to know what he said?”

“What?”

“He said, ‘You didn’t deserve that. None of you deserved that.’ He didn’t mean, like, what happened specifically, but all of it. Your dad dying and Abby being unable to cope, ditching you on our doorstep. Bellamy raising us. You and him being too many years apart. What Bellamy did to you. What you did to Bellamy. What both of you did to me. Me spending my entire senior year high out of my mind. Mom being so sick for so long. The way she died. The money issues. Us growing up here, in this small place, not being given the tools we really needed to do anything more than survive. I was so angry for so long. I joined the Corps because I wanted to do something with it, all that anger, but it didn’t help. It’s tragic, all of it, every part of us. It’s everybody’s fault and nobody’s fault at once. Lincoln helped me see that, but until now, I didn’t realize I hadn’t let go of it.”

“What do you need from me?”

“Depends.” She takes another hit. “What do you got?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ve apologized already.”

“No, now I’m asking for forgiveness. I’m sorry for what happened with Bellamy. I was young and stupid and short-sighted and, god, so fucking horny. It was all my fault. Well, no, it’s complicated, I think, but the point is, I’d like to believe I would never do anything like it again. Except, you know, platonic bath-taking, apparently.”

Octavia chokes out a laugh. The tip of her nose is a little pink, but she never cries, so Clarke lets herself believe it’s a trick of the light. The sun is setting and the porch light hasn’t kicked on yet. “That’s so dumb.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry too.” She sniffs, wipes her nose with the back of her wrist.

“You didn’t do anything.”

“I made Bellamy choose between us instead of trying to work through it, knowing he’d choose me, knowing we’d cut you out. Knowing that Abby wanted nothing to do with you and you had no one else who loved you like we did. I think about it all the time, how I abandoned you just because I didn’t understand what the two of you had. And then after Mom died, I abandoned Bellamy too. I couldn’t stand looking at him anymore. Still can’t, really, but I’m working on it. The thing is, we needed you when Mom was sick. Bellamy needed a — whatever you were to him, and I needed a best friend.”

“I forgive you. I really do. I want things to be okay again.”

Octavia wipes under her eye with the side of her hand. “Yeah. I forgive you too.”

“Really?”

“Mhm,” she says, kind of wetly. Her voice cracks on the sound. She pulls her purse onto her lap and digs around, takes a tissue out of a little plastic pack and dabs at her eyes, careful not to smudge her makeup. She sniffles and puts her purse back on the ground.  

“Okay,” she says, taking a steadying breath, “now I need to hear all about this bitch Lexa.”

And that’s it. It’s over. Seven years of guilt and regret bleed out of Clarke’s body. She plucks the joint from Octavia’s fingers. “Well first there’s Niylah.”

“Good god, Clarke, how much pussy do you get?”

 

* * *

 

It’s dark when they come back inside, suitably high and bitten to death by mosquitoes. Bellamy is watching CNN and he mutes it when they come in.

Octavia does a little dance while chanting “piz-za time, piz-za time” over and over. Bellamy looks to Clarke as if to ask, _Did you break her?_

Clarke shrugs at him, and forces herself to look away, because she forgot how easily turned on she gets while she’s high, and Bellamy looks like a snack, all comfy and battered like that. He’s only in a pair of basketball shorts, no shirt, hair a mess, teacher glasses. In another life she imagines how easy it would be to crawl across his lap and kiss him until he unravels beneath her.

“I’ll go put in the order,” Octavia says, and literally skips into her room.

“How high _are_ you?” Bellamy hisses once she’s gone. “What happened?”

“You’re really hot, you know that?”

“Clarke,” he says, admonishingly.

She shakes her head, steps closer to him, runs her fingers through his hair. “You know what I like to be called.”

His jaw drops. “You can’t just _say_ shit like that.”

“Why not? I talked it out with O, now it’s time to talk it out with you.”

“Now is absolutely not the time.”

“I like touching you. I want to do it more.”

He takes her wrist and pulls her hand away from his head. “I’m really glad you and O worked things out, but this is tenuous at best right now, and I have a feeling it has a lot to do with being high.”

“You should get high with us.”

“I will not get high with you.”

“C’mon, don’t be boring.” She bends down and gently bites his earlobe, enjoys the little click in his throat in response. “Unless you’re afraid of what you’ll want to do to me.”

She can feel something settle over him. Maybe Mr. Blake has come back. God, she misses Mr. Blake. “Don’t tempt me, princess.”

“What are you going to do, bend me over your knee?”

“I might.” Her wrist is still clutched in his hand. She wonders how much goading it would take to make him snap.

She whispers in his ear, “I dare you.”

Octavia’s bedroom door flies open and Clarke takes a small step away from Bellamy. Octavia rushes into the room like a plane and sweeps Clarke up at the back of the knees. “Look how strong I am now!”

“Holy shit.” Clarke squeals with laughter. “Put me down!”

Octavia flops onto the other end of the couch, Clarke still on her lap, cuddling up like they used to way back when. “I just had the _best_ idea.”

“What?” Clarke asks.

“No,” Bellamy says.

“You don’t even know what I’m about to say.”

“Anything you think up while high isn’t something to follow through with.”

“Bullshit. I came up with the idea for my company while I was high.”

“What’s your idea?” Clarke asks, jabbing a finger into her chest and pressing her forehead against Octavia’s temple. She smells really good, like department store perfume, and not the eight-dollar body sprays they used to buy at the mall.

“We should have a party.”

“Oh god,” Bellamy says.

“What kind of party?” Clarke asks.

“A reunion. You, me, and Bell, obviously. Harper and Monty are at OU doing their doctorate.”

“Murphy and Emori!” Clarke suggests. “And my friend Raven and her fiancee Zeke.”

“Raven, Finn’s ex-girlfriend Raven?”

“That’s the one. She’s my good friend now.”

“Whoa, wild. Oh, Bell, where’s Miller and his boyfriend?”

“Lexington.”

“We can get them to come up, too. I bet I could convince Jasper to fly back if I paid for his ticket —” She frowns.

“What?”

“His girlfriend died a couple years ago. He’s real messed up over it.”  

“Maybe we can cheer him up.”

“Maybe. I wish I could get Lincoln to come, but he’s busy taking care of the company. We don’t have enough employees to manage the place without us.”

“That’s okay. I’ll fly to California and come visit you guys.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“There’s no way we can get people from —” Bellamy counts the number of states mentioned on his fingers. “Five states here in two days.”

“Not with that attitude,” Octavia says.

 

* * *

 

They eat pizza and watch Netflix. The surreality of earlier has dissipated and now it feels like home again. The only awkward moment is when Bellamy decides he wants to go to bed, and Clarke is used to helping him, but she doesn’t know if she should while Octavia is here, so she only offers, and Octavia says she’ll handle it, and they’re gone in Bellamy’s bedroom a long time.

When Octavia comes back out over an hour later she looks like she’s been crying again, and Clarke stands from the couch and lifts her arms for a hug. This time when Octavia hugs her, it’s a real one, a bone-crushing Octavia hug that lasts a truly uncomfortably long time, and when she pulls away she says, “I need a smoke.”

Clarke follows her out. She doesn’t know what Octavia and Bellamy talked about, and she doesn’t feel like it’s her place to pry. She hopes things are better now and not worse. She hopes they’ve forgiven each other.

Octavia lights a citronella candle and offers Clarke a cigarette. Earlier, Clarke had left off at her goodbye with Lexa, so now it’s Octavia’s turn.

“What’s up with this Lincoln guy?” Clarke asks. “Is he ace too?”

“God, no. He’s the most, I don’t know.” She makes a hand gesture straight forward. “I don’t want to say ‘normal’ because that implies being ace is un-normal, but — he’s pretty fucking normal.”

“How does that work exactly?”

“Story time.” She shifts to get comfier in her seat, turned sideways toward Clarke with her knee up to her chest against the armrest, glowing cherry of her cigarette animated with her hand gestures. “We met at a networking thing. I did two tours, then I got out and decided to go to LA because I knew a few guys there already. Got a job doing copywriting stuff, which, me, right? Can barely string a sentence together. I got really weirdly into it, how competitive it all is, and before I knew it I had my own book of business. So, Lincoln was at this networking thing for the same reason I was, prospecting, and we struck up a conversation which didn’t feel like anything at first, I kind of forgot about him actually, but later he told me he was hitting on me really hard and I was just seeing none of it, obviously, because I never do, so when he asked me to lunch later I thought it was all business. Then when he asked me to dinner the next week, I thought it was business again until he walked me to my car and kissed me, and I freaked the fuck out. Like, I hadn’t done anything with anyone since Jasper. Zero interest.”

“What did you do?”

“I told him there’d been a misunderstanding and ducked out. He texted me the next day apologizing for misreading the signs and asked if I wanted to go out again as friends. And like, at this point I don’t know what to make of this guy at all. He’s like super good-looking, objectively I guess, and friendly, like golden-retriever friendly, and we have a ton in common, except for instead of joining the military, he wrote a lot of sad poetry for two years. So now I’m too curious to say no, because it’s not like my calendar is particularly full or anything, you know, work keeps me busy but otherwise I have no social life to speak of except the occasional beer with my soldier buddies, but that’s only when we’re up for battling I-10 traffic.

“So we have brunch — it’s a Sunday — and he asks me in like the most earnest way, ‘Where was the miscommunication? I thought we had something.’ And like, I’m not _not_ out, but I also don’t think it’s anyone’s business, you know? The guys all know I’m off-limits. They don’t know why but they know I’m not interested. They probably assume I’m gay, which. Fine. So I tell Lincoln, like, I’m ace. And god, you should have seen his face. Like I just told him I was a bodhisattva or something. Poets, you know, artsy types, they dig anything they don’t understand.”

“The good ones, anyway,” Clarke says.

“Right, yeah, you would know.” She taps the ash of her cigarette into the Tupperware container they’re using as an ashtray. “After I tell him, he has about a thousand questions. Not in an asshole way or anything, not interrogating me, but actual curiosity. And they’re good questions too, a lot of them I never really thought about. Can I fall in love? Well, yeah. Do I feel sexual desire? Sure, sometimes. What’s the difference between sexual attraction and desire? Do I feel sensual or aesthetic attraction? Do I enjoy sex at all? And he takes _notes,_ Clarke. On his phone. I’m like, so freaked out, and he keeps apologizing like, ‘Sorry for being so intense, I’ve just never met an asexual person, this is so cool.’ I think, okay this is it, he just thinks I’m a freak, this will be the last I hear from him. But it’s _not._ He wants to go out again for lunch, so I meet him again. And this time, the fucker brings _research._ He looked up all this shit about asexuality, like he went to the library and checked out books on it. Printed articles. He wrote down a whole list of questions he didn’t ask the first time. So I’m like, dude, why are you doing this? And he goes, ‘Because I like you, and I want to understand.’ And that was it for me. That was when I knew. This is my person now, and he’s annoying and weird and one day his curiosity and kindness are gonna get him killed, but he’s mine.”

“Wow.”

“We’ve been together ever since.”

“And he’s totally fine not having sex?”

“We have sex. It’s kinky weird sex like you and Lexa, like, very cerebral I guess, but it’s sex.”

“How does that work?”

“I actually read a lot of the articles he printed out, and it turns out I really like sex when it’s not for the sake of sex, you know?”

“No, I don’t know.”

“When it’s intimacy. When it’s not compulsive. When it feels like any other affectionate activity like doing something nice for someone you love. Or when it’s a challenge I guess, learning something new, wrapping your head around the million different ways to get off. I like making him feel good, and I like when he makes me feel good, and most of all I like that it’s optional. The only difference is, like, his body by itself doesn’t turn me on. I have to get into a really particular headspace which can be hard sometimes. So, the desire is there, but not the attraction. And he’s okay with that.”

She snubs her cigarette out in the Tupperware container and slips another out of the pack.

“When I was a teenager,” she continues, “it just seemed like sex was _the_ thing you did when you loved someone. And that made me so uncomfortable, like, there are so many ways to show love, you know? To me sex never seemed more important than anything else. I never understood what the big deal was. It was just kind of gross to me, when kissing and holding hands seemed much more sanitary. And people who have sex just because they want it? Like just, by itself _want_ to have sex? Who can meet people at a bar or wherever and think, ‘I want to bone them’? Still cannot relate. Anyway, Lincoln and I opened our own firm after a while and now we’re making bank. The end.”

“So you really are happy.”

“For now, yeah, things are working out.”

“I didn’t ruin your life.”

She props her cigarette between her lips and flicks her Bic to light it, blows out a stream of smoke. “I mean, you made it kinda shitty for a long time, but no, it’s definitely not ruined.”

 

* * *

 

Octavia only works a half-day the next day, so the rest of the time is spent party-planning, to Bellamy’s chagrin. For a while Clarke is concerned his discomfort is genuine, that he doesn’t want his old friends to see him like this, in which case Clarke should definitely put a stop to the whole thing, but early in the afternoon he gets a text, reads it, and says, “Miller is in.”

Harper and Monty Facetime them while Clarke is fixing mac ‘n’ cheese. Octavia brings the call over to Clarke, chin hooked over her shoulder, and there are a lot of “oh my god”s and “how have you been”s, and when they ask what Clarke and Octavia are both doing home, Octavia says, “Bellamy scraped his knees and got melodramatic about it.”

From the living room, Bellamy says, “My leg is broken in _three places.”_

“Wimp,” Octavia replies. Then to Harper and Monty, “He’d never survive the military. They broke our legs in three places every day.”

Monty and Harper are married now, which Abby probably mentioned in an email a while back. She had apparently received Harper’s invitation, but it was during the eight-month span in the Himalayas where Clarke had zero internet access. Octavia attended.

After mac ‘n’ cheese and a last-minute run to the drug store to pick out nail polish so they can give each other manicures like old times, Clarke texts Murphy while Octavia gets hold of Jasper.

 _Hey buddy!_ she types. _Long time no text._

And, because Murphy is still Murphy, he replies, _New decade who dis._

They go back and forth for hours. Murphy is a shift leader at Burger King. Emori is a park ranger. They still live in Carmel, not married yet but they have a two-year-old named Phillip and another baby on the way. Emori is four months in. Murphy sends about a dozen pics. To the idea of a party, he says, _Hope u like PBR,_ which Clarke takes as a yes.

Clarke calls Raven later that night and holes up in the guest room knowing the conversation will take all evening. She started the call at 97% battery and drains it down halfway through the call, spends the next several hours propped against a wall beside an outlet. By the time they hang up, Bellamy and Octavia have both long gone to bed.

 

* * *

 

Clarke has no nice clothes. In fact, she barely has clothes at all. She owns seven tank tops, one long-sleeved thermal shirt, three pairs of cargo pants, a pair of pajama bottoms, and a hoodie. Her only shoes are a pair of boots that have walked all over the world. The next day, the day before the party, Octavia insists they go to Easton so Clarke can upgrade. Clarke resists, saying Bellamy needs to be taken care of (Bellamy, overhearing this, says, “Bite me.”), they need to get the house ready (it’s already spotless), and moreover Clarke refuses to own anything that she’s not willing to carry on her back.

She might have won the argument if it weren’t for that last one, to which Octavia takes particular umbrage. “I know you went to art school, but that doesn’t mean you get to be a pretentious minimalist now. Own useless junk like the rest of us.”

“She’s got you there, princess,” Bellamy says.

“Shut up,” Clarke replies, but eventually relents.

Shopping with Octavia again, as shallow and materialistic as it now seems, heals something deep in Clarke, some broken thing she didn’t notice she’d been harboring, like a small piece of shrapnel in her back suddenly lodged free. It feels even better than it used to, because now they both have money to spare, and while they could shop the higher-end stores and buy full price, they still stick to the outlet stores and clearance racks, searching for deals, picking things out for each other and saying, “I can alter that.” It seems to make Octavia a little sad, because while she knows how to sew, Aurora used to do all of their altering for them.

Clarke ends up with an entirely new wardrobe that suits her style now, which she didn’t notice had changed — floral to remind her of Niylah, deep neutrals for Lexa, lots of yellows and pale pink for Bellamy, because she knows he likes those colors on her. She picks up a little pink negligee to admire it, thinking Octavia is still in the fitting room, but then she hears a throat clear behind her and quickly puts it back on the rack.

“Got someone to impress, Griffin?” Octavia asks, and suddenly she’s back to stern, scary Octavia again.

“No,” Clarke says. “You know, three years on the road, fucking in the dirt. Pretty things just catch my eye I guess.”

Octavia gives her a look like, _sure, uh huh,_ and moves on to the three-for-ten-dollars thong bin.

For the first time in Clarke’s life, she calls her mom to ask for permission to drop over five hundred dollars on clothes, to which Abby says, “Of course. Why do you even need to ask?”

“It’s just a lot, is all.” Four years ago, Clarke didn’t know five dollars from five hundred.

“It’s fine. I’m glad you’re settling back in. Are you in Easton?”

“Yeah, with Octavia.”

A pause. “Is this a hostage situation, or?”

“No, Mom.” Clarke glances up at Octavia, who is several feet away, digging through her purse looking for her credit card, while a disinterested-looking cashier subtly checks her phone under the counter. “Things are really okay. We duked it out.”

“And no one’s dead, or maimed, or internally bleeding.”

“None of the above. It’s all good. Are you busy for lunch? Do you want to meet us somewhere?”

“Sure, I’d like that.”

They meet Abby at a little Thai place. Her hair is really long, highlighted in a flattering way, and she doesn’t look any older than when Clarke last saw her. She’s fascinated more by Octavia’s Marine stories than Clarke’s traveling ones, but then again, Clarke relayed most of those over email already, whereas Octavia has been a stranger for nearly a decade.

While Octavia talks, Clarke remembers how much trouble Lexa had with her parents when she told them she was going on the road. They were furious, threatened everything they could, stopped talking to her for years. They accused her of abandoning them, after she had already denied them by going into gender studies instead of architecture so she could eventually take over the firm. Meanwhile, Abby was never anything but thrilled for Clarke and supportive of her choices. Lexa had speculated it was more emotional apathy than actual encouragement, but the fact Abby stayed in touch via email so diligently for so long made Clarke think she really did care, and she really has changed. Soon they’ll have to discuss Clarke’s trust fund, and how she can get access to it. She knows there’s a lot in it, more than she could ever need for herself and her future family, so she’s going to sit down and do the math to figure out how much it will take to live comfortably, and see if she can donate the rest to some of the NGOs and volunteer organizations she worked with while abroad. She doesn’t know if Bellamy will want her to get her own place or what, but if she does end up staying with him, she would insist on paying rent and her share of the utilities. There are too many ifs right now to make any decisions, and it’s still early yet — as of today, she’s only been home a week — but she has a plan, roughly speaking. First and foremost that plan requires Octavia’s blessing and Bellamy’s apology.

It’s a short visit. Abby foots the bill before heading back to work. She kisses Clarke on the cheek and says, “I’m so glad you’re home.”

“Me too,” Clarke says.

 

* * *

 

Over the span of the day and a half it took to plan, the party has changed drastically. It is no longer a simple get-together, but a camp-out, which is to say Emori is bringing a few tents and they’re going to build a fire and eat s’mores and sleep outside. Except Bellamy, of course, who will be sleeping in his bed, and probably Clarke, who never wants to sleep outside again for as long as she lives.

The only person who can’t make it is Jasper, because they couldn’t work out the flights in time, and he said he couldn’t take off work anyway. He’s an editor at a popular weed magazine and, he says, it’s “cronch time” on the next issue.

Harper and Monty are the first to arrive, bearing wine and a massive cheese plate. Harper tears up when she hugs Clarke and Octavia.

“I was so worried you two would never find each other again,” she says. Octavia gets misty-eyed over it too, and Clarke, weirdly, is the only one not crying. While Harper is showing Clarke wedding photos, Raven and Zeke arrive, and Clarke barrels into her so hard they nearly fall over. Raven still has the knee brace and walks with a slight limp, but she doesn’t need the cane anymore. Zeke seems super excited to meet her. Next are Miller and his boyfriend Bryan, and then Murphy and Emori. Murphy made a two-hundred-song playlist just for the party and, after hugging Clarke so tightly he picks her up off the ground, goes immediately to Bellamy to figure out how to hook his music up to the surround sound. Emori is wearing a loose t-shirt, so Clarke can’t tell if she’s showing yet.

It’s overwhelming, is what it is. All of it. There aren’t even that many people but the house feels cramped and hot, and eventually after introducing everyone to everyone else and a few rounds of beer, most of the party relocates outside, where Emori has started putting up tents with Octavia’s help, and Monty lights the bonfire.

Clarke keeps glancing worriedly at Bellamy, who refuses to sit down. He’s standing in the kitchen balancing precariously on his crutches while he tosses caramel corn into his mouth — who brought caramel corn? — and gets caught up with Miller. Clarke has a bottle of hard cider clutched in her hand and she doesn’t know how it got there.

Bryan, who apparently used to be a bartender, brought an array of liquors. He pours fancy-sounding shots for everyone, except for Emori and Bellamy because of the baby and pain meds, respectively.

It takes Clarke approximately one and a half hours to get drunk. The party has spread out and split up in a configuration that should not surprise her: Raven and Murphy, despite having virtually nothing in common, seem very taken with one another; Octavia has cornered Zeke, presumably to trade notes on military stuff; Emori appears to be coaching Harper and Monty about baby preparation; Miller and Bryan went on a firewood and beer run. Mostly they’re all outside around the fire, except for Bellamy who is _finally_ sitting on the deck, seemingly content watching his friends from afar, and Clarke, who is inside, tipsily trying to stay on top of clean-up.

“Clarke,” Bellamy calls from outside the screen door. “Stop it. Come out here. Have fun.”

She hooks a trash bag onto a doorknob so people can throw their beer bottles away rather than leave them on the counter. She goes outside and says, “What is ‘words I never expected out of Bellamy Blake’s mouth’?”

He takes her by the wrist and pulls her toward him roughly, so that she falls across the chair onto his lap. His arm is around the small of her back. He’s smiling stupidly at her.

“I like this dress.” His eyes flick down to her chest. It’s a sundress with lemons on it she got for twelve dollars.

“It has pockets,” she says, and puts her hand in one of the pockets.

“Nice.”

She gets a little closer, noses nearly touching, and looks in his eyes, which are definitely reddish. “Are you high?”

“Weed plus Oxy is a good combo, according to the internet.”

“It’s a bad idea, me being drunk and you high.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“We might do something stupid.”

“Like what?”

“Like this.” She leans in and kisses his neck, open-mouthed, catching his skin between her teeth.

She can feel him grip the fabric of her dress in his fist. “Jesus wept, Clarke. Damn.”

She keeps at it, because he tastes so good, and she loves the little sounds coming out of his throat.

“I’d give anything to be able to bend you over that railing and fuck you stupid,” he says. His hand climbs up her skirt to her hip, where he slots his thumb beneath the band of her underwear like he’s ready to pull it down.

“Tell me what else you want to do to me.”

“I want to taste you. It’s been so fucking long since I tasted you.”

She looks at his mouth, imagines riding his face, grinding her cunt onto him, letting him do what he does best.

Then he bursts out laughing.

She laughs too, but doesn’t know why. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing,” he says, trying to control what has now turned into a fit of giggles, which — jarring, coming from Bellamy. “Everything. It’s all so weird. Isn’t this weird? Clarke Griffin is at my house, on my lap, and — fuck.” His laughter dies down but the fondness in his expression remains. “I never thought I’d see you again. I can’t believe you’re here. You went all the way around the world and wanted to come back to me. It’s like. It’s like if Brad Pitt called me up and asked to grab a coffee.”

“What exactly about Brad Pitt reminds you of me?”

“Nothing, except you’re both blonde and hot.”

“I like high Bellamy.”

“High Bellamy likes you.”

“How is it possible we’ve never gotten fucked-up together before?”

“Because I was always the responsible adult.”

“And you’re not anymore?”

“Nah, I’m an irresponsible adult. I pay all my bills one day late.”

Clarke laughs so abruptly she snorts, and that makes her laugh harder. God, she wants to be kissing him. She wants to skip all the hard stuff coming their way and get to the endgame. The way he’s looking at her right now — grinning like an idiot, utterly delighted — it seems like that’s what he wants too. She curls up on him, her head on his shoulder, kicking her feet idly over the arm of the chair. She closes her eyes. Bellamy is rubbing his thumb in circles on her thigh. She feels small again, the way Lexa could never make her feel, the way no one has been able to make her feel except Bellamy.

“When I go to sleep,” he says, “I think you’ll be gone by the time I wake up. When I wake up, I think it’s not real, that I just dreamt you coming home. But then there you are.”

“Here I am.”

“If my leg weren’t broken and you weren’t drunk, I’d carry you into my room right now and show you how glad I am you’re here.”

She pokes his chest. “Would you really, or is that high Bellamy talking?”

“Probably the latter, but — if I don’t say this now, I’m not going to.”

She lifts her head from his shoulder. “Say what?”

He suddenly looks deadly serious, eyes wide and sad, a little afraid. “I never stopped loving you.”

For a second she can’t breathe. She's too drunk to handle such a confession. She opens her mouth to say something, anything, maybe tell him he’s being ridiculous, maybe re-admit what she’s already told him in writing but hasn’t yet said aloud. She doesn’t know if she can now, with Octavia just ten feet away, unsure if her reciprocation would undo all the work she’s put into mending their friendship these past couple days.

She's saved from the responsibility of a response by the sound of the back door squealing open. Miller and Bryan come in from the garage. Clarke climbs off Bellamy’s lap to help them with the firewood.

 

* * *

 

Clarke doesn’t go to bed that night until four in the morning. She spends her time drunkenly floating around between the groups that form and shift as everyone moves about, participating in drinking games people bring up to play, Kings and Never Have I Ever and others that fade out of her drunken memory, cleaning here and there to save her morning-self the trouble. She goes to bed nearly sober, having switched to water around two because she’s not a fucking rookie anymore (neither is anyone else apparently, not a single person goes overboard), but she wakes up the next morning with a hangover anyway. She’s the first awake. Octavia’s bedroom door is closed, which makes Clarke think she gave up on sleeping outside. Raven is asleep on the couch. Clarke glances out the sliding glass window and sees four tents around some dew-damp kindling, and begins the arduous task of making breakfast for nine people.

Raven wakes up with the smell of coffee and helps Clarke by manning the toast and setting up an assembly line. Octavia joins them next, then the rest of the gang floods in together just as Clarke is pulling the bacon out of the stove. They eat sitting in a circle on the floor. Murphy puts on a few jams for them to listen to. They all talk and talk and talk, complain about their hangovers and how fucking old they’re getting. Murphy, oddly, is the liveliest of them, tells the wildest stories out of anyone, the horrors of fast food work, which is saying something considering they have a park ranger, two soldiers, two biologists, an engineer, and a world-traveler in their midst. A couple hours in, Clarke starts to worry about Bellamy.

She knocks softly on his bedroom door. No answer. She opens it anyway. Bellamy is curled on his side, facing away from her. She closes the door quietly and climbs into bed with him, around his back. Kisses the nape of his neck, down his spine. Presses her cheek to him and drapes an arm over his bare stomach.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

“I saved you a plate of breakfast. Want me to bring it in?”

“Not right now, thanks.”

“Do you want some coffee?”

“No.”

She climbs over him, careful not to touch his stitches, and falls to the other side so she can face him. His hair is extra curly from the humidity. He smells like woodsmoke. He won’t open his eyes.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” she says.

“It’s nothing. I always crash like this. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. Tell me.”

He buries his face into the pillow. Muffled, he says, “I’m sorry I said what I said last night. That was out of line. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot like that.”

“Is it true?”

He cracks an eye open. The sweetest color brown she’s ever seen. “Of course it’s true.”

“Then I think we have a lot to talk about.” She runs a hand down his arm, a vain attempt to console him. She wants to tell him everything, blab the whole lot of her feelings for him, but she won’t until Octavia gives the green light. Assuming she even will. If she’s still uncomfortable with the idea, Clarke will respect that and keep her distance.

“Why don’t we table this until Octavia is gone?” she asks. “Then we can sit down and talk about everything we need to talk about.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

“We’ll find out. Here, let’s plan a time. Whenever Lexa and I had to have a difficult discussion, except the one we broke up over I guess, we planned a time for it so we could get our thoughts in order beforehand. I’m driving Octavia back to the airport tonight. We’ll talk as soon as I get home. I’ll even bring ice cream.”

“What kind of ice cream?”

“What kind do you want?”

“Dairy Queen.”

“Okay. I’ll get DQ on the way home, and we’ll sit on the patio and talk it out.”

“Not the patio. It needs to be a place we don’t like so if everything goes south it doesn’t ruin that spot forever. I broke up with Echo in the guest room and now I can barely go in there.”

“Why was Echo in the guest room?”

“She was sleeping there. It was pretty messy, at the end.”

“What about the laundry room?”

“Too cramped.”

“The garage?”

He nods. “I can do the garage.”

 

* * *

 

The party disbands with promises to keep in touch and do this again soon, maybe over the holidays, maybe at someone else’s place. Murphy and Raven trade phone numbers because apparently they both play the same MMO and want to start a guild together. Bellamy gets up and dressed to say goodbye to everyone, and they all wish him a speedy recovery.

The moment they’re gone, Octavia starts packing. They needed to have left for the airport fifteen minutes ago. Octavia is taking forever saying goodbye to Bellamy while Clarke is waiting in the car to give them privacy, anxiously looking at the clock, telling herself John Glenn isn’t that big of an airport anyway, and it’s a weird time to be flying, so the TSA line won’t be very long. But still, Clarke is a stickler about making flights on time, and they’re running dangerously close.

Octavia rushes out the back door going, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” and for a second Clarke is transported back to high school, chilly winter mornings waiting in Bellamy’s idling truck, Octavia trailing a handful of minutes behind.

This drive is so much easier than the last. Clarke puts a Disney playlist on shuffle and they scream-sing “Hakuna Matata,” “I’ll Make a Man Out of You,” “Zero to Hero,” “Let it Go.” Clarke nearly misses her exit and crosses four lanes of traffic, getting honked at by three drivers while Octavia squeals and laughs, her suitcase sliding in the back seat and slamming into the opposite door.

They get to the airport earlier than Clarke anticipated, about an hour before take-off, because she sped and nearly got them killed. The departures traffic is mostly dead, and Clarke parks crookedly in an empty lane. She gets out and rushes around to the other side to help Octavia with her suitcase. They hug for a long time, a crushing Octavia hug. When Clarke pulls away, she’s surprised to feel a familiar pressure behind her eyes.

“I, um. I’m really glad we —” she starts.

“Me too,” Octavia says, completely stone-faced but with a slight wobble in her lower lip.

“And we’re okay?”

Octavia nods. “We’re okay.”

“Um. There’s one more thing.”

Her whole body is shaking. Her heart is beating so fast she can’t take in a full breath. Above them, an airplane takes off. The engine is so loud she can feel it in her molars.

“I — I want to be with Bellamy. In a relationship. That’s my intention anyway. But I won’t if you don’t want me to. I’ll stay here until he gets better and then leave, and I can promise nothing will happen between us.”

Octavia dabs under her eye makeup and lets out a broken little laugh. “God, you’re both such fucking idiots.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You should see the way he looks at you when you’re not looking. It’s like. I don’t know. It’s the same look he got when he bought that fucking truck forever ago. It was like the world opened up for him. That’s how he sees you. Like the world is something he can touch now. I could never take that away from him. From either of you.”

“So we can…”

She nods. “You can. And anyway, he already asked.”

Clarke has to wipe her stupid wet face with the flat of her hand. She wishes she had a tissue. She wishes she could hold it together. “What did he say?”

“A bunch of dumb shit about how losing you was the worst thing that ever happened to him or whatever. I was barely listening.” A tear falls off her eyelashes and down her cheek, dragging a trail of mascara with it.

“I’m — this might sound stupid, but I’m going to marry him. Not right now, but eventually.”

“Does he know that?”

“Yeah. He just doesn’t believe it yet.”

Octavia takes Clarke’s hand, squeezes it. Matching orange nail polish, the both of them. “Love you, sis.”

Even though Clarke can’t breathe for fear of completely losing it, she manages to choke out, “Love you too.”

Octavia’s hand slips away. Her heels clack loudly in the quiet space as she enters the airport. A recorded voice comes over the intercom urging people not to leave their baggage unattended. For once, Clarke isn’t the one leaving, and it doesn’t feel like goodbye at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of drinking and recreational drug use in this chapter.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI, this is the final chapter of the story. The next is just an epilogue.

On the way home, Clarke picks up a cookie dough Blizzard for herself and Heath bar with peanut butter for Bellamy, assuming his order hasn’t changed in the past decade. When she pulls up to the bungalow, the garage door is open and Bellamy is waiting on a folding chair, an empty one beside him, his crutches propped against a workbench. Clarke could kill him. It takes two hands to unfold chairs. He could have fallen and re-broken his damn leg _and_ head.

She parks in the driveway instead of pulling all the way into the garage, thinking for some reason the more room they have to talk, the better. She climbs out of the car, hands him his Blizzard and moves the chair around to face him, so she’s not spending the entire conversation avoiding looking at the blood stain. Maybe he’ll let her paint the floor this summer.

“Still bothers you, huh,” he says.

“I wouldn’t call it a fond memory, no.”

He sucks some ice cream off his spoon. “And yet, somehow I don’t mind it.”

They sit in tense silence. Nearby, a train whistles and rattles against the tracks. 

“I’m not sure where we should start,” Bellamy offers.

“Start with something easy.”

He thinks about it. “Did your mom ever tell you what she did? When Mom was sick.”

“I don’t think so.”

“So, we were in a bad situation for a long time. Financially. Mom had insurance through work, but when it takes you a long time to die, your premiums skyrocket. The house was paid off, so we took out another mortgage on it, but eventually we couldn’t even pay that, so I was making house and utility payments on credit cards.”

“I didn’t think you had a credit card. You always use cash.”

“I only started during the last round of cancer. Hate the fucking things. When I maxed out one card, I’d open another. I just accepted the fact when Mom died I'd file for bankruptcy and abandon the house. I never added up how much I owed, but it was definitely five figures. The minimum payments alone were nearly a thousand dollars a month. I wasn’t working, Mom obviously wasn’t working, and Octavia had a part-time gig as a receptionist at a salon, mostly to get her out of the house. We had virtually no income. Your mom must have talked to my mom, I can’t figure out how else she did this, but she got hold of all of my credit cards and paid them off. Then she went to my bank and made a deposit in my account. Five thousand dollars, to help O and me get back on our feet. And she didn’t tell me. One day I was fielding a dozen credit collection calls, and the next, they stopped. It took me forever to figure out what she’d done, and when I approached her about it and told her I couldn’t accept it, that not only was it too much, but I’d just broken her daughter’s heart, all she said was, ‘Thank you for taking care of her for as long as you did.’ I thought she’d hate me for what I did to you, but it kind of felt like we were the only two members of the We Failed Clarke Griffin club. I ended up living on that money while I got my teaching certificate. Diyoza had put in her notice by that point and Jaha wanted me to replace her as soon as possible. Octavia got dead-set on the Marines and I couldn’t talk her out of it. She refused to take a penny of your mom’s money.”

“I had no idea about any of this.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. At the time, you — I don’t want this to sound like a criticism, but you hadn’t had to think about money pretty much ever, and as much as I kind of resented you for it, I was also happy for you, that you didn’t have the same stress we had. And like, we fed you almost every day of your life, which was a lot for Mom even though she would have never admitted that or asked for money from your mom, at least not after she stopped babysitting you, so I try to think of that to make me feel less guilty, but mostly I just try to accept that sometimes it’s okay to let people do good things for you.” He stirs his ice cream forlornly. “Which I guess brings us to our current struggle.”

“Was wondering when you’d get there.”

“I don't know. For a long time I thought I did right by you nearly your whole life, up to that day you came into my room, and then I made the wrong choice. But — I’ve had years to think about this — it’s not that simple. I could forgive myself for a mistake. I could forgive myself for misunderstanding the gravity of the situation. But it wasn’t a mistake, and I did understand the situation. From the first moment to the last, I knew. I knew, and I did it anyway. I wish I could say I didn’t care, either, but I did. I cared, I knew, and I still made the choices I made, and that’s why I can’t live with myself. On my best days I think maybe it’s not as big a deal as I’m making it out to be. You’re fine, you seem happy, you moved on. O is doing great. On the worst days, I’m left wondering what made me capable of doing what I did. I don’t have an answer for that, but I know I’m not any better of a person now than I used to be, because when I ask myself if I’d do it all again, I want to believe I wouldn’t, but — I think about it a lot, saying no to you and still keeping you away from that asshole you were seeing. But then we wouldn’t have had what we had. That time we were together seems so long to me, but it was only a couple months, and even though I was scared and grappling with my guilt, I was still happy. Mom was alive and O was having a good time and it was the last time we were all together as a family. I was in love with someone who felt the same about me, and I didn’t know at the time that was as special as it was, that it would be so hard to find again. Someone who feels so in tune with me, who has history with me, who shares my overall life philosophies, but — that’s what’s so messed up, isn’t it? The reason we have all that in common is because I helped shape you. Does that make it real? Who would you be without my influence on you? How can I ever parse out what’s you and what’s the shadow I left over you?”

She scrapes the bottom of her cup with the spoon. “You’re giving yourself too much credit.”

He puts his cup on the ground by his feet, Blizzard only half-eaten, and slumps down further in the chair. “If that’s true, tell me you didn’t fall in love with Lexa because she ordered you around, and you fell out because she stopped.”

Something cold lands in her gut that isn’t the ice cream. How could he have known? “It’s more complicated than that.”

“How?”

“I was attracted to her at first because of the domination thing, yeah, and for a while that was all we had, but I fell in love with her for the person she was underneath. The power play in our relationship was open. We talked about it. We got mutual satisfaction out of it, and we knew when to turn it off. Our love was built from respect. I fell out of love with her — I don’t know when, or how, but I knew it was over when she accused me of only loving you because I was only seeking your validation. And that had shades of truth but not the whole truth. We also loved each other. Like, real love. You think it’s less real because you helped raise me, but to me, it doesn’t matter how we got here, it just matters that we _are_ here. That we came back here. What we had was messed up, yeah, but the foundation we built was real, regardless of your influence on me or whatever. Lexa tried to convince me it wasn’t. You’re trying to convince me it isn’t. And yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have been drawing your fucking face all the time and writing you a postcard every other week, and maybe that wasn’t coming from a totally healthy place. I get why she was so bent out of shape, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help how much I thought about you. That’s what it comes down to. I couldn’t help falling in love with you when I was seventeen and I sure as hell can’t do anything about it now.”

His hands are clasped over his stomach. His throat has gone a little red. He talks to the ceiling. “I never told Echo about you. I told her about Gina, but not you. At first, she thought the postcards were cute. She saw how proud I was of you, how happy I was to get them. I covered the entire fridge with them until the fridge broke. It was that last year she figured out I had feelings for you and they weren’t entirely familial. One day she was like, ‘This isn’t working, is it?’ I didn’t answer right away. I thought it was working just fine, but I also refused to think about our relationship more than I absolutely had to. She checked all the boxes: we cared about each other, we both made decent money with good benefits, we gave each other necessary space but were there for each other when we needed it. The sex was decent, even if a little...routine.”

Clarke’s eyebrows raise. “Oh?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Not to toot my own horn, but I really don’t.”

He sits up straight, runs a hand over his face. The sunset has faded into pink and casts an unnatural glow over him. “Two or three nights a week, always the exact same pattern. I go down on her, missionary, from behind, her on top, back to missionary, finish. We had it down to the minute. We’d start at ten-thirty, be done by a quarter after eleven, and she’d be asleep fifteen minutes after that. She was big on hygiene, so it had to be planned every time because she liked to prepare. That was fine, really. But even preparation can be fun, but she didn’t value fun and she didn’t seek it out. Like, ever. And I get it, she was an Olympic runner and got injured and it kept her from qualifying. To her, fun involved discipline and success, and sex was all about efficiency. Near the end, she got an offer to train a kid in Winnipeg, and she asked me to come with her. I said no. That was when she realized there was something, or someone, I was more committed to. I didn’t know it yet, but she was right. You can’t be in a relationship when you know there’s someone else you’d rather be with. Or just because you’re afraid to be alone. So she went to Winnipeg and I stayed here. I wasn’t even that sad about it. I was lonely, yeah, but I wasn’t broken up over it. I never really grieved. She’s the longest relationship I ever had, and nothing in it was that bad, but it wasn’t great, either.”

“That’s how I felt about Lexa too.”

A lightning bug drifts into the garage and glows intermittently around their heads. The silence stretches on for so long it becomes uncomfortable. 

“What if it’s just the way we love?” Clarke asks.

“What do you mean?”

“What if we can’t be happy unless what we have is a little fucked? What if our past is just the price we have to pay to get to where we are now, and without it, we would have never gotten here at all? What if we let ourselves stop thinking about what should have happened, and just deal with what _did_ happen?”

“I don’t think it’s that easy.”

“What if it was? Why don’t we just let go?”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

Clarke lifts her hand in the air to catch the firefly on her finger. It crawls down to her wrist and sits there a moment before flying away. “The first year I was on the road, I got so attached to things I thought I needed. I would fill up a sketchbook and keep carrying it around with me. They were so little, I thought, it didn’t matter. But then one or two became five or six or seven, and they ate up weight and space in my bag. Every sketchbook I kept I had to carry on my back across the whole damn world. And I realized, there’s nothing I can draw now that I can’t draw again later. There’s no reason to keep shitty doodles I make to pass the time. So I started throwing them away. Even Lexa was horrified. She’d say, ‘But that one is so beautiful’ or ‘You worked so hard on that.’ So? I learned what I could from those sketches, and I let them go. You and I got what we needed from each other when we needed it, and it’s time to let go. I needed someone I trusted to help me get through all my firsts, to keep me from naively wandering into relationships with abusive assholes, to see me when I was invisible to everyone else. You needed someone to love, to give your big sad heart to, to recapture the kind of love you thought you lost. We got a lot out of what we had. We’re not the people we used to be, so we won’t have the problems we used to have. Maybe we can just throw the old sketchbook out and get a new one.”

“How? How can you do that when I was so cruel to you? I was colder to you than I’ve ever been to anyone.”

“Was it hard for you, to be that cruel?”

“You have no idea. I was so maxed out. I thought it would be easier if you hated me. I thought it would ensure you’d never want to come back. I knew there was a better way to manage, and maybe I could have if Mom hadn’t gotten sick. I could’ve talked Octavia down and tried to mend things between you two, but she was just — something died in her. I was terrified. One wrong move and I thought she would shatter. You called me a coward and you were right, but I only had enough hands to deal with Mom and O. Believe me, I wish I had been stronger and braver and whatever else I needed to be, but I wasn’t. I was weak and scared and stupid. I still am.”

“Are you apologizing for that?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“If I apologize, you’ll forgive me, and I don’t want to be forgiven. I don’t deserve to be forgiven.”

“What will it take to earn it?”

His head snaps up. “What?”

“If you don’t deserve my forgiveness, then you can earn it. How are you going to earn it?”

The question seems to take him off-guard. He stares at her, mouth open, like she just spewed all the secrets of the universe at him. “I...have no idea. I guess it depends on what you want.”

“I want us both to be happy, and I think we can find that. You can earn my forgiveness by trusting me.” She reaches over and takes his hand. “I’m sorry for everything that happened between us, Bellamy. I’m sorry we met and fell in love too young. I forgive myself for the part I played and the pain I caused both of us. I’m going to forgive you when you’re ready, and I’m asking you to forgive yourself. You’re not a monster for falling in love with someone you held power over. You’re not a monster for pushing me away so I could live my life without you. You’re not a monster for betraying your sister’s trust. You’re allowed to forgive yourself.”

Bellamy pulls his hand away and covers his eyes. His lip is trembling. “Please, stop.”

She gives him a minute to regain his composure, but he doesn’t. He leans forward, forearms propped on his thighs, face in both palms. His shoulders are shaking. She’s not sure whether to comfort him or leave him alone. It’s night now; she can barely see him in the dimness. Mosquitos have bitten up her ankles and arms. A cricket chirps so loudly that it must be somewhere in the garage. She takes both DQ cups and throws them away in the big bin, and while she’s at it, drags it out to the curb to be picked up tomorrow. When she returns, Bellamy seems to be forcing himself to take deep breaths. She puts her hand on his shoulder.

“That’s enough for today,” she says. “Let’s go inside.”

 

* * *

 

Clarke can’t sleep. She keeps replaying their conversation over and over. Her room, Bellamy’s old room, is too hot like it’s always been, always five degrees warmer than the rest of the house, even with the fancy new ceiling fan installed.

“Fuck it,” she says, and throws off the single sheet covering her legs. She goes into Bellamy’s room without knocking, as quietly as she can, which is easy because he has a noisy box fan whirring in the corner. It’s significantly cooler in here. He’s asleep on his back, blankets tangled in his legs. She crawls into bed with him, facing away.

“What are you doing,” he asks, drowsy and slow.

“Going to bed.”

“You have your own bed.”

“I want this one.”

“I’m in this one.”

“That’s why I want it.”

She feels him shift to his side behind her, still not touching. “Is that my shirt?”

She’s wearing his _Led Zeppelin IV_ shirt. “You said you didn’t want it.”

“I said I never got rid of it.”

“Well, now it’s mine.”

“You can’t just take my bed and my clothes.”

“I can and I will.”

“Still such a fucking brat.”

“Your brat.”

He sighs, defeated, takes her by the middle and drags her toward him. His cast scratches the back of her calf, and his body is nearly uncomfortably warm against hers. “Yeah yeah, my brat.”

 

* * *

 

She wakes up the next morning to the feeling of his lips pressing kisses to her shoulder. His hand is under her shirt, on her stomach. She entwines her fingers between his, pushes against him and feels his erection at her back. He holds her close, breathes her in. Her first thoughts are fluttering: slip her underwear to her thighs, let him slide into her. Then they sharpen: coffee, pain meds, breakfast, laundry, errands. Then they’re made full: what they talked about yesterday, how much further they have to go. How can anything be so difficult when this feels so simple and good? When she feels so loved by him?

His scratchy morning voice: “In Peru, you said you wanted a small life. Did you mean that?”

She nods, wakes up fully at the mention of the letter.

He returns to peppering kisses over her skin. Seems like he’s been awake for several minutes now. His fingers trace the line of her hip. She’s already wet for him.

“What does a small life entail?”

She can barely think with his fingertips dipping into her underwear, grazing her skin, nowhere close to where she wants them to be. It’s definitely revenge for her teasing him in the bath.

She can’t find the words right now, how all she wants is to live in this little bungalow with him, wake up beside him every morning thinking about all the trivial things that need to be done in a day, meals to prepare, work to do. Home isn’t a trap when it’s where you want to be. Routine isn’t boring when there’s love between the calendar lines.

“When people would invite us to stay in their homes,” she begins, not sure it’ll make sense but saying it anyway, “I used to be so envious, these wonderful people in their modest little spaces, the things that occupied their days, communities they built. I want that. I’m not cut out to be a nomad. I don’t want a big life. I want to be the kind of person who always has a home, who invites others in. Who has plenty of love to spare.”

“What will you do, though? I guess you don’t need money, but there are still a lot of hours to fill up in a day.”

“You’re kind of my full-time job right now.”

She braces herself to be tickled in retaliation, but instead he slides his hand up and pinches her nipple, which wrenches a shocked moan from her throat. She writhes against him, gripping the sheets, and eventually he lets her go.

“I mean after that,” he says. She can feel him smiling into her neck. “What will you do?”

“I don’t need a job, but —” He continues brushing her nipple lightly with the side of his thumb. She can barely think. “Could do some freelance work, I don’t know. I’m not worried about it.”

“You don’t worry about anything anymore, do you?”

“What is there to worry about?”

His hips grind hard against her ass. She gasps, meets his movements, begs him with her mind to touch her, just for a second, anything.

“God you’re amazing,” he says.

He stops finally, and she’s both relieved and frustrated. His hand returns politely to her side. “Hard to believe you’re the same girl who almost noped out of the first day of first grade.”

“I don’t remember that.”

He talks slow and thick in her ear while he rubs her back, brings her down from the edge. “You’d never had a full day of school before. It was your first time at lunch, first time in the cafeteria. You’d done fine until then, but you got there and lost your shit. Couldn’t find O because she was in a different class. You kept asking for me. No one could calm you down so they went and got me. That was back when the middle school and elementary were still in the same building. They called me out of class, and I thought, this is it, I’m getting expelled. So I go all the way across the school to the front office, and you’re sitting on the cot in the nurse’s station trying to stop crying. You’d given yourself the hiccups. Your feet couldn’t even touch the ground. You were staring at your knees like you didn’t want anyone to see you. And then I figured it out — you asked for me. I sat down with you and told you to stop being such a crybaby, but that just made it worse. So I told you it was okay, first days are always hard. After about ten minutes you were laughing again, and they let me eat lunch with you in the office. Then you went back to class. I was convinced it would happen again the next day, but it didn’t.”

“Do you still see me like that? As someone who needs taken care of?”

“No. You’ve grown into the most capable, badass person. But I catch glimpses of you, and it’s like you’re still my — you know. What you were to me. A word I don’t have, or one I don’t want to say. Part of me feels horrible about that, but the other part —” He tugs her closer, curls around her tighter, a low noise of want in his throat as he presses his nose into her neck. The blunt tips of his fingernails dig into her thigh.

She starts trembling again like she used to when she was a teenager. She’s never had this kind of response to anyone except Bellamy, like flames lapping at her skin.

“What if —” She swallows, tries to bring herself down, might do something stupid if she can’t get some control over herself. Then again, that’s part of the reason she wants him: she’s comfortable losing control around him, handing it all over. “What if I like that you still see me that way sometimes? As long as, you know, in your head I’m an adult and can take care of myself, and you respect me.”

“Of course I respect you.”

“Then why is it bad, if I want it too?”

He inches away from her, rolls on his back. She can hear him take a series of steadying breaths. She tries to do the same, but they enter and exit shuddering. “I need a cup of coffee before I can wrap my head around that.”

 

* * *

 

Several hours and to-do list items later, Clarke is taking a shower, just finishing up, when she hears a crash in the kitchen, followed by a thunk heavy enough to reverberate through the floor. She quickly turns off the shower and grabs a towel, barely wraps it around herself before flinging the door open. She thinks it came from the kitchen, so she rushes down the hall, and finds Bellamy on his back on the linoleum, his arm over his eyes, breathing heavily. Beside him are shards of a pint glass he was apparently planning to fill with something. His crutches are propped against the opposite counter. He couldn’t have fucking waited for her.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” she asks, kneeling beside him. “Did you hit your head, or —”

He smashes the side of his fist against the ground three times, hard enough to make the shards dance over the floor.

“Stop, stop, don’t —”

“Leave me alone, Clarke,” he says through his teeth.

“I need to help you up, come on,” she says, tucking the corner of the towel into itself. She reaches down to grab his arms, but he pushes her away.

“Go. Away.”

“I can’t go away. You need help.” When he doesn’t respond, she asks, “What happened?”

“I forgot. I forgot I couldn’t put weight on my leg, and I took a step and fell. That’s all that happened. I’m not hurt. Now leave.”

She ignores him, squats down to start picking up the biggest shards of glass. She’s dripping all over the floor.

“Clarke,” he says, a warning, but what’s he going to do?

“If I don’t clean it up, you’ll just step on it, and it’ll go right through your remaining damn foot and you won’t be able to walk at all.”

She steps gingerly over him and the glass to get the broom from the cupboard, then sweeps the small pieces up as best she can. When she’s done, he brings himself upright, his back against the cabinets. She can’t help but notice he’s sitting exactly where she did when she had a panic attack after senior-year homecoming.

“Here’s how we’re going to do this,” she says. “You’re going to put your arms around me, and I’m going to lift you up.” She bends down and tries to lift his arms. They're much heavier than they look, and they look very heavy. “Just like a pack, but reverse. Ready? One, two —”

“What are we doing, Clarke?”

“Getting you off the floor.”

“No, I mean — what are we doing?”

She drops her hold on him, sighs deeply, and kneels beside him.

“You really want to continue this conversation now? On the kitchen floor while I’m soaking wet?”

“Playing house?” he asks. “Pretending this is a real thing?”

“It is a real thing.”

“It’s not. It’s the ghost of an unreal thing.”

It stings when he says it, because she gets it — maybe in accepting what happened, they also have to accept that all they had was in the dynamic. The shame, secrecy, novelty of it. Maybe if they try it again, it won’t be the same. He’s obviously been thinking of her earlier question; she imagines him so distracted by it that he forgot his stupid leg was broken and that’s why they’re on the floor talking about it.

“What we had isn’t something anyone gets to keep,” he says. “Twice as bright, half as long.”

“Have you considered that maybe we’re the exception? That maybe two people can love each other as family, then as lovers? That maybe it’s okay to see me like a partner sometimes and a daughter others?”

He looks away, expression pained: the word he couldn’t say.

“Maybe,” she continues, “none of that needs to be in separate categories for us. I can be your best friend and sister and girlfriend. I can be here for you, and annoy the hell out of you, and fuck you stupid, and spend every waking moment at your side.”

He closes his eyes, lets his head rest against the cabinet. “You’re going to get cabin fever here anyway. Itchy feet. You’re going to leave again. And you should. You should be in New York opening an art gallery, or —”

She interrupts him by crawling over his lap, straddling his thighs, and taking his face in her hands.

“I am so fucking done with you doubting me,” she says. “Doubting what I want, what I know is best for me. I’m sick of it. I have done everything you told me to do. I’ve fallen in love and back out. I’ve had sex with more people than I can count. I’ve done enough drugs to kill me. I have a degree in a subject I’m passionate about. I’ve partied all night in Tokyo. I had an orgy in De Wallen. I spent three days detained in customs in Gaza and took a month-long vow of silence in a monastery in Kathmandu. I’ve worked on farms, in orphanages, schools, theaters, restaurants, bars, hostels, tourist traps. I am free and I have lived. I go wherever I want, and where I choose to be is right here, in Arcadia, Ohio, with you. I love you, Bellamy Blake, and I am not leaving you again.”

He searches her eyes for a lie, doubt, something. “Clarke...”

“If you tell me one more time this isn’t going to work out, I swear to —”

“Kiss me.”

Finally. She presses her mouth against his, hard, both hands gripping his hair, wet body soaking his clothes. Slivers of glass grind into her knees. She doesn’t care. He sucks her lip between his teeth. She’s kissed so many people, and not a single one of them was as vicious at lip-sucking as Bellamy, a trick she carried on to other partners that some liked but many hated. She’s always preferred the kisses that bruise.

He tugs at the towel. It comes undone and slips off, pools at her hips. He drags his rough hands down her back, up to her breasts, callused thumb flicking a nipple. He bites at her throat, and she shifts her hips, can feel him hardening underneath her. She’s still pent-up from this morning, feels like she might break apart if he doesn’t slip inside her right now. She reaches down and works at his belt buckle, button, fly. Slides her hand in and palms him over the cotton of his boxers.

They should talk about this. They should be adults about it. Clarke should run into the bedroom to get a condom, assuming he even has them. Or better yet, they should get up off the goddamn floor and relocate to the bedroom. She should break away long enough to tell him she has an IUD but hasn’t been tested in a while, she guesses neither has he, but she can’t manage the words now that his teeth are grazing her breast, cock fully hard in her hand. She thinks about Echo, their boring sex, their lack of spontaneity. Fuck it.

She shoves the band of his boxers down, pulls him out all the way, grinds against him to get him wet. He lets out a soft moan against her throat. She guides him into her, lowers herself slowly. Still hurts a little, the width of him stretching her wide, not quite as wet as she needs to be, but she’ll get there soon. She lifts up to sink back down, and now he’s all the way inside. She stills her movements, tries to calm her aching body.

“Clarke Griffin on top.” He rests his forehead in the crook of her shoulder, one hand spanning her lower back. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Not a pillow princess anymore,” she says. “Pillow queen.”

He grits out, “Will the queen please move? I’m dying.”

So she lifts up and rolls her hips on the downswing. He groans, clutches at her, lets her set the pace for once, which should be slow and sensual, invoking the tantric or whatever, but this isn’t Lexa, this is Bellamy, and she knows Bellamy likes it fast and hard, likes it to feel so good it hurts. She imagines when he gets his cast off, all the things they’ll get into, a whole summer on their own. She’s never going to get dressed again. Every morning she’ll wake up to his cock hard against her ass, and before she’s even fully awake, he’ll push in, fuck her into the mattress, make her come twice before they even think about coffee. He’ll bend her over the kitchen counter. He’ll go down on her in the garden. They’ll drive out into the country and do it in the bed of his new truck, under the stars.

He’s panting, nose pressing into her jaw, guiding her hips with his hands. Something doesn’t feel right.

“You’re suspiciously quiet,” she says.

Another specialty of Bellamy’s was the dirty talk. She found other people who were into it but they were all cheesy and awful. It was hard not to laugh, always something like, _I’m gonna make you feel so fucking good,_ or, _I’ll be the best dick you’ve ever had,_ or in one memorable case, a constant stream of Swedish that could have been poetry for all she knew.

He doesn’t say anything, but she feels him tense up, like he’s pushing something down.

“You can say it,” she says.

He shakes his head.

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Too much,” he mutters into her skin.

“Say it, Bellamy. You know you want to.”

“I can’t.”

“Come on. What am I to you?”

“Fuck,” he gasps. He reaches up and grabs a fistful of her hair, uses his other hand to grip her hip and set the pace, his strength coaxing her body harder onto him. His lips are pressed against her jaw, his breathing ragged. “Baby,” he breathes. “Fuck, baby, you’re still so fucking tight.”

From then on his mouth is a fountain of filthy praise. _Touch yourself, baby, wanna feel you come on my cock,_ and, _That’s it, like that, good girl._

She digs at her clit with two fingers, rests her forehead against his, and this definitely can’t last, she’s careening into climax. She forgot how quickly he could get her going, how easily and often she comes with him. She thought, before, it was just the newness of it all, her age maybe, but now she sees it’s not. It’s just him. It’s what he does to her.  

“You call anybody else that?” she asks, voice cracking as her stomach clenches to stave off her orgasm.

“You’re the only one.”

“Say it again.”

His lips are by her ear. He pulls her hair so hard it hurts. She’s pretty sure her knees are bleeding. They’re both soaked.

“Baby,” he whispers.

She comes so hard she has to grip the countertop above her. Bellamy takes over, thumb rapidly circling her clit as she rides it out, thighs shaking, drenching his jeans worse than they already were. He breathes out a, “Fuck,” through his teeth. She can feel his cock widen and his whole body shudder. He holds her down and comes inside her as deeply as he can go.

They rest in silence for just a second before Clarke becomes suddenly very aware of the pain in her knees.

“Do you feel better now?” she asks.

“You could say that.”

“Good. Now can we please get off this fucking floor?”

 

* * *

 

Falling in love with Bellamy Blake the second time is just as easy, fast, and inevitable as the first, but it’s the sequel to a long and arduous journey of forgiveness. Clarke starts the game one day while she’s fixing a grilled cheese.

“I’m sorry for leaving that skate out,” she says. She flips the sandwich. It sizzles.

Bellamy is at the dining room table, lesson planning for next year even though school just ended. “What?”

“You know, when you broke your head open. I always told you it was your fault for being an idiot, but I left the skate out. So, sorry.”

“Okay?” he asks, somewhat suspiciously.

“Do you forgive me?”

“Of course.”

She pads over to kiss him on the cheek, but he catches her lips instead, and she ends up settling onto his lap, spatula in hand. They only break apart when the smell of burnt bread fills the air.

Bellamy’s turn: they’re in an exam room in the hospital, waiting for a doctor to come in and remove Bellamy’s stitches. He’s sitting on the table while Clarke is on a wheely stool, playing with the blood pressure pump.

“Sorry I used to call you a crybaby all the time,” Bellamy says.

“Oh,” Clarke replies, wheeling around aimlessly. “You’re forgiven.”

A few days later, Clarke is out back, watering the plants. Bellamy is reading the Sunday funnies on the deck, glass of lemonade sweating on the table beside him. It’s so hot even a thin dress feels like too many layers. She’s jealous Bellamy can walk around shirtless.

“Sorry I made your mom’s funeral all about me,” she says, hand raised over her brow to shade her eyes from the sun.

Bellamy turns the page. “I forgive you.”

They’re spending an entire day watching the extended cuts of the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy. Clarke’s head is cushioned on Bellamy’s lap, and Bellamy is combing his fingers idly through her hair.

“Sorry for saying yes when I maybe should have said no.”

“Forgiven,” Clarke says. “Sorry for putting you in that position in the first place.”

“Forgiven.”

It’s raining out; they’re stuck inside, playing chess and listening to music. The sliding glass door is open; the Venetian blinds rattle against the frame. Clarke is winning for the first time in her life, maybe because they made a bet: loser goes down on the winner for an hour.

“Sorry for choosing Octavia over you,” Bellamy says, “and pushing you away, and being cold to you when you needed me most.”

“Forgiven.” Clarke slides her queen across the board. “Checkmate.”

Later, Clarke is riding his face. “Sorry for manipulating you.” He nibbles her clit and she cries out. “And making you believe you were doing me a favor by taking my virginity.”

He taps her thigh. She lifts off him. His mouth is shiny pink and his beard is soaked. “Forgiven.”

Clarke drops a hot penne noodle into Bellamy’s palm, which he tosses from one hand to the other to cool. He pops the noodle into his mouth and says, “Couple more minutes.” Then, “Sorry for being totally aware of how fucked-up everything would become and doing it anyway. And also, as unintentionally as it was I guess, taking advantage of the power I had over you. Except for the Finn thing. Fuck that guy.”

That’s kind of the big one, she thinks. She lifts up on her toes and kisses him. “You’re forgiven.”

“That easy?”

“My forgiveness was never in question. Have you forgiven yourself?”

“I think so. I’m getting there anyway.”

“Then yeah, it’s that easy.” She smashes a clove of garlic with the flat of a knife. “Should I add another clove?”

“Six is enough.”

She gauges the smattering of garlic already browning in the pan. “I’ll add another.”

There are a handful more apologies after that, for little things and big, but all the major ones are covered. With each one, he settles more assuredly into himself, the Bellamy she always knew was buried underneath his fear and regret, under his overwhelming sense of obligation — the Bellamy who only needed a bit of space and time and love to grow.

 

* * *

 

He gets his cast off at the end of June. It gets replaced with a walking boot that can be removed, so he’s much more mobile now. With the help of Abby’s lawyer, the guy who hit his truck settles, and Bellamy buys a giant Tundra, brand new, that can barely fit in the garage. When he shows it to her, she says, “Your dick is way too big to own a car like that.” It’s the first frivolous purchase he’s ever made, and even then, she spent days talking him into it, instead of the decades-old trucks with a hundred thousand miles apiece he’d been scoping out.

Now it’s the Fourth of July, and they’re spread out on a blanket in the backyard, waiting for the sun to go down, fireworks across the tracks to begin. They can hear the distant thrum of music, Springsteen, maybe. Bumblebees bump clumsily into the geraniums. The air smells like charcoal grills and woodsmoke. Cicadas rattle in the trees. His hand is between her legs, under her skirt, rubbing languidly as he looks down at her.

“Remember that time O held a bake sale to raise money for new cheerleading uniforms, and I ate like, all the cookies because I had no idea what they were for, and blamed it on you?”

Clarke laughs. He slides his middle finger into her, and the laugh turns into a gasp.

“Sorry for that,” he says.

Octavia hadn’t fallen for it anyway. “Too far. You’re not forgiven.”

He leans down to kiss her, slow and sweet, smiling against her lips.

When he lets go, she says, “No more sorries, okay? I think we’re done apologizing.”

“Just one more.”

“Okay, one more.”

His finger slips out of her. He rests his hand on her thigh. “I’m sorry for doubting you. Doubting us. But I’m not sorry for letting you go. We both needed that. And if we’re done with apologies, I guess I should turn it around and say, thank you for coming home to me.”

“Thank you for giving me a home to come back to.”

Music rises in the distance and the crowd cheers. He rolls onto his back, arm under his head to watch the waning light of day. Fireflies float above the grass, glowing in slow, steady beats. She takes his hand in hers, tilts her head against his shoulder. The first firework soars into the sky, over the line of maples hedging the backyard, and bursts into a bloom of gold.


	18. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, remember when this used to be a porn fic?
> 
> Note, there's some daddy stuff in here, so if that's not your bag, you might want to skip the first half of the chapter. The second half is all sans D-word.

**A LITTLE LESS THAN A YEAR LATER**

It’s the Saturday after the last day of school, the day all the teachers go in to finish grading and clean up their classrooms for next year. Bellamy, as always, is the last one around. He likes to make sure his room is completely ready for the new year so he doesn’t have to stress about it come August. He’s just put a stack of blue books in the recycling bin under his desk when someone knocks on the door.

“Come in,” he says, assuming it’s Jaha about to come lecture him on gun control for an hour on his way out, as if that’s not preaching to the fucking choir. 

He glances up and there’s Clarke, peeking in the door. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Blake.”

A wave of déjà vu hits him. She opens the door a little further and steps inside. She’s wearing her old uniform — tight shirt, short skirt. Her hair is in two little braids. She's clutching a textbook to her chest. She’s even got on a pair of knee-highs. For a second he’s totally speechless, wants to say,  _ What the fuck are you doing,  _ but he’s frozen to the spot, can’t make his jaw close.

She seems undeterred. “I came to talk to you about my grade?”

He finally gets with the program, stops thinking with his upstairs brain. Clarke has been going through the storage unit Abby rents out for her. Must have found her old uniforms, god help him. He busies himself by straightening a mechanical pencil in line with his keyboard. “I’m not sure what there is to discuss, Ms. Griffin. Grades are final.”

She closes the door behind her and slides the deadbolt. The new fire doors were Wallace’s idea. The school board was not happy about it. She approaches his desk, and for a second it’s really like she’s seventeen again. His little crybaby. 

“There has to be something I can do,” she says, desperate, setting her book down. It’s next year’s history textbook, brand new. She had to have broken into the front office somehow and stolen it. God, he loves her.

He leans back in his chair and spreads his legs wider. “I’m afraid not.”

She looks down, tries to hide the tremble of her chin. The tip of her nose turns red. She’s actually crying. Christ. Back when, the sight of Clarke crying always sent a semi-truck of emotions crashing into him — annoyance, obviously, that the slightest thing could set her off; but then righteous anger at whatever caused it, even if it was her fault; and something else, something much deeper that he could never articulate. A bone-deep need to make everything better, to rip himself and the entire world apart to make her happy again.

Even now, he has to bite all of that back because it’s fake, but she makes it look so real. A shameful tear rolls down her cheek. She falls to her knees in front of him. “Please, Mr. Blake. You have no idea how much trouble I’ll be in. I’ll do anything.”

So dramatic. He reaches out and strokes his knuckles down her face, wipes a tear away. Smiles at her a little because he can’t help it, and she almost smiles back before catching herself, forcing her mouth back into a little pink pout. He presses his thumb to her outstretched bottom lip, drags it down, and she opens for him. He slips inside. She immediately starts sucking on his thumb, last few tears caught on her eyelashes, face all red for him. 

He slips his thumb back out, smears her spit down her chin. 

“Is that what you want?” she asks. “I can —” She looks away as if she can’t say it.

“You can what?”

She swallows. “I can suck your cock.”

“You’d do that for me, baby? Right here where anyone can see you?”

She nods, tentatively puts her hands on his legs, inches closer to him. “Please. I’ll do anything for an A.”

He unbuckles his belt slowly, watches her face while he does it. He knows she wants it, but her expression says nothing but fear and apprehension, total desperation, and it might be the hottest thing he’s ever seen. In another life she would have won an Oscar by now. He pops open his button, unzips his fly, shoots the barest glance toward the door and windows to make sure no one’s walking by. He strokes himself a few times before pushing the band of his boxers down and pulling his cock out. 

Her lips part into a surprised O, just like the first time she saw it; the same O she makes when she’s bouncing on his cock — she likes it on top now, that’s new, definitely not unwelcome. Sometimes it’s good to lie back and let her take what she wants from him. Most of the time she likes being tossed around and fucked within an inch of her life, but on rare occasion, usually as the result of too much caffeine, she likes taking the lead.

She touches him tentatively, and the déjà vu is back, nearly an exact reenactment of that first blowjob in his bedroom. This should be strictly filthy-hot, but his heart is too full. He loved her just as much then as he does now. 

“Like this, Mr. Blake?” she asks. He doesn’t know how she’s doing it, fumbling but also stroking him expertly at the same time, the exact way he likes.

He combs his fingers through the wisps of hair falling out of her braids. “Just like that, baby.”

“Do I — do I put my mouth on it?”

“Yeah, baby, put your mouth on it.”

She leans up on her knees — he doesn’t let himself imagine them all bruised up later, simultaneously concerned and turned on by it — and sucks him between her lips. Now she’s not fumbling at all but going at him like the cocksucking queen she is. Before Clarke, he never really liked blowjobs. He thought it was just a preference of his to go down rather than be gone down on, until he realized it was because none of his prior partners actually enjoyed it. Clarke would suck his cock until her jaw fell off if he let her, and he would, were he not always so eager to reciprocate. Even now, he’s considering tossing her up on his desk and letting her make a mess of it.

Normally they talk about this kind of thing beforehand, not that Clarke has ever really done anything quite like this. They’ve tried some roleplaying, but it’s always been sequestered to the house, hard and soft limits re-affirmed beforehand. It made him feel weird at first until he noticed how utterly sincere she was about it, like she’s being right now, throwing her entire self into the performance until, in the thick of it, he can lose himself in the facade too, become whoever it is he’s trying to be, trusting Clarke with every atom in his body to pull the plug if he goes too far, and trusting himself not to push too far to begin with. In the space between exists the most blissful and nearly unfathomable freedom he’s ever felt.

She lifts off his cock, purposefully making that hollow popping sound he likes, and a thin trail of spit clings to her lower lip. Now she’s red all over, blotchy flush high on her cheeks, up her neck, insides of her elbows and tips of her ears (and he knows over her chest too, at the back of her knees; he loves how pink she gets). 

“Do I have an A yet, Mr. Blake?”

“Not yet, sweetheart. Now you’re gonna let me fuck you.”

Her lips part. She lets out a little gasp, looks utterly terrified. “But I’m a virgin.”

His cock jolts at the memory — glistening red ring at the base of his dick, the sounds she made, pained-pleasure expression. Cunt so tight it nearly hurt. Snow falling outside, fire crackling below. For years, until she returned to him, it was his favorite memory, the thought he conjured during the darkest times. Now he doesn’t need it, can just roll over and there she is, asleep beside him. Happy, safe, his. He didn’t think life could ever be this good.

“Gotta lose it sometime,” he says, and helps her to her feet. When she’s standing, he drags her down to him, breaks the scene for just a second to kiss her, taste his cock on her tongue, tell her without words he loves her and he’s having fun and  _ I can’t believe you’re doing this.  _ He feels her mouth curl into a smug little smile, as if to say,  _ Hell yeah I’m doing this.  _

He pulls away and spins her at the hip, pushes her down onto his desk so she’s bent at a ninety-degree angle. He stays in his chair, wheels around behind her and lifts her skirt. She’s wearing pristine white panties, the kind some girls think are embarrassing but which he finds ridiculously hot for how purely plain and innocent they are. She’s soaked herself, a big wet stain over the crotch and smearing the insides of her thighs. He wants to lick it all off of her, suck on her cunt until she drenches the linoleum, but more than that, he wants petty revenge.

He runs his nose up and down her slit over her underwear, presses his tongue against the wet cotton. She yelps in surprise, slides her feet together until her heels click.

He kicks the side of her shoe gently. “Feet apart.” She slides them tentatively back out. “There you go, good girl. Keep them apart for me, okay?”

“Okay,” she says, voice high and wavering.

He tugs her underwear down just below her ass, then he tucks the bottom of her skirt into the waistband, immediately drags his thumb in harsh circles over her clit. A strained sound falls out of her. She wiggles her hips in invitation, because when she wants him to eat her out, no amount of character dedication will stop her from being a brat. 

He spreads her asscheeks, runs his wet thumb over her tight little hole, revels in the genuine gasp she makes. He leans in and presses the tip of his tongue against her. She jerks and squeaks in surprise, immediately writhes against his mouth. She can handle almost anything he throws her way, can take a stiff upper lip to nearly all of it — flogging, edging, bondage, breath play. Never breaks character for any of it. 

But tease her asshole and she’s done for.

He dips his tongue into her and feels her clench around it. Her head is down on her forearms and she’s moaning so loud he’s sure he’s going to get fired. At this point he doesn’t care. He doesn’t really worry about anything anymore, and it’s partially the new meds, but it’s more just....Clarke. Her resourcefulness, confidence. This must be how she used to feel about him for so many years, the utmost faith that he’d come to her rescue when she needed him, always be there for her, always help solve any issue she threw at him. He didn’t realize how much he needed that in return. He can’t conceive of a single problem he could ever have that Clarke wouldn’t be willing and able to help him with. 

“Not fair,” she says, glaring back at him, pushing against him so he’ll go deeper. He swats her ass lightly. 

The thing Clarke loves and hates most about anal play is that, with any other kind of stimulation, she can usually come on a dime. Once, he made her climax just by playing with her nipples for a couple hours. Anal gets her close but never quite brings her there, and he knows it’s only a matter of time before she teaches herself how to get off with it. For now it’s a fun trick to keep in his back pocket for times like these. But he has to be careful, because if he goes too far, she’ll pull out her own back-pocket trick, a very recent and truly unfortunate development, and he’ll be ruined.

He runs a hand up her thigh and meets a trail of wetness nearly all the way to her knees. He lifts off just to look at it, and she whines and shifts back toward him, but he holds her at the hip and watches it dribble from her swollen red cunt into her soft blonde curls.

“God, baby, you’re soaked. You like that, huh?”

Next line in the script should probably be,  _ No, Mr. Blake,  _ but she can only squeal out a pitiful-sounding “Mhm.” 

He stands and knocks his chair away with his foot, takes his cock in hand and sidles behind her, slaps it against her asshole which makes her kick her heels back together. Her underwear slides down to her knees. 

“What did I tell you?” he asks.

“Feet apart.”

“That’s right." He drags her underwear down to to her ankles. "Now you lose these.” 

She steps out of them and he balls them up and puts them in his pocket. While her feet are still together, he slaps her ass once, hard, lets it sting for a beat and then massages over it. He switches to the other cheek and does the same, watches as his handprint sears the surface of her skin. He does it a few more times for good measure, until her ass is as bright as the rest of her.

“Apart,” he says, forcing his hand between her legs. 

She brings her feet apart again. He takes his cock and slides the tip over her asshole, only lightly bumping against her rim. He wants to fuck her ass but she’s not prepared for that, and it’s not like he keeps lube in his desk at school, although now he thinks he needs to start keeping some on him at all times, if Clarke is going to spring this kind of thing on him. 

With no warning he pushes into her cunt, to the hilt in one quick movement, the way he knows she likes — fast, hard, nearly painful. She cries out; her knees buckle and he has to catch her, an arm under her stomach, and doesn’t let her regain her footing before pulling out and snapping his hips back in. She falls forward. The mat on the desk moves with her, knocking his pencil cup clean off. it clatters to the ground.

Clarke steadies herself once he gets a rhythm, pushes back up on her palms. He yanks her shirttails out of her skirt and bunches them at her armpits, drags down the cups of her bra and pulls at her nipples. 

He thinks they’ve developed a bit of a telepathic bond, because sometimes he knows what she’s going to say and do before it comes out, just fractions of a second in advance, only enough to steel himself for whatever it is, which is exactly what happens now, and he doesn’t know how he knows, but he grits his teeth the second she takes in a breath to prepare for whatever she’s about to say.

“Please don’t come in me, Mr. Blake. I’ll get pregnant.”

God _ dammit.  _

It’s a new thing, whatever it is. They were having a lazy Sunday afternoon lay a while back, the kind that’s slow and feels like it exists outside of space and time, no hurry or even intention to come (tantric sex, Clarke calls it, but it takes way more practice than he anticipated to undo all the bullshit that’s taught him sex is about orgasming), and sure, she says some weird shit when she's in a certain frame of mind, but this time she said, “Want you to fuck a baby into me,” and he came  _ immediately. _

He thought he was supposed to be the dominant one here, but now that she has this chain to pull, she’s been yanking at it every chance she gets to bring him to his proverbial knees. One time she said “breed me” and he came so hard he felt his entire soul jump out of his body. 

He could sense her scheming about it for days, his unexpected and extreme reaction to any indication of getting her pregnant, and he grew anxious over it, in a weirdly good way, the way you get when you buy a new phone and don’t have a case on it yet so you think it might break any second. They were at the grocery store and he was doing some quick math on one versus three paper towel rolls, a single roll in hand, while Clarke was leaning on the cart playing on her phone, being, as always, a useless brat when it comes to saving money on groceries. 

Then she said, “How would you feel if I started calling you ‘daddy’?”

His eyes unfocused. The paper towels slipped from his grip.

“What,” he said. 

“I don’t know. Sometimes I want to say it but I feel like you’ll freak out.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“It’s not a big deal. The word is kind of meaningless to us anyway, you know?”

It’s true, neither of them ever had any reason to use it, so it’s not like it has a personal context, a face behind the word. Clarke barely remembers her dad; Bellamy never knew his.

He managed to glue his brain together enough to bend down and pick up the paper towels. “Might get confusing when we have kids.”

He glanced at her. Her eyebrows were nearly to her hairline. “‘When’?” she asked excitedly. “You really do want kids?”

“Well I didn’t, but then we got together, and now I want about a hundred.” The reason why doesn’t need saying, really, and if he tried he wouldn’t be able to articulate it: that they would be good parents doesn’t quite cut it, though it’s true. It’s something much deeper between them, faith in their love and wanting to make something with it. Or someone, as it were.

“I can’t birth a hundred babies.”

“We can adopt.”

“We’ll start with one.”

“Four.”

“Two and a dog.”

“Potentially a third and I’ll throw in another dog.”

“We’re gonna need a bigger house.”

“Then we’ll get a bigger house.”

“Deal.”

The conversation turned him on  _ a lot  _ and they ended up abandoning their cart which was mostly empty anyway and speed-walking hand in hand out of the grocery, barely making it to the truck before mauling each other. She gave him road head on the short ride home while he dipped his hand into her leggings to finger her. She lifted off his cock only to ask, “So is that a yes?” 

“Yeah,” he said, almost forgetting what he was saying yes to, but at least being able to blame it on his aching dick and no higher mind than that.

They nearly finished each other off before getting out of the truck, managed to drag themselves away just barely, and didn’t even make it inside. He bent her over the hood and fucked her standing, garage door wide open. It couldn’t have lasted more than five minutes, because Clarke said, “Come in me, Daddy, please,” and that was it for him. 

It’s exciting, having a new word. A filthy word. A word that isn’t just any word, but  _ the  _ word, a word that describes the absolute fuckery of their entire history, and owning it. He finds it bizarrely empowering, to be able to so fully accept what they are now. He absolutely respects and values her as his equal, but she’s still his baby girl, and it took him a long time to understand that those things aren't mutually exclusive. 

She throws the D-word at him when he’s not expecting it. At first it was only in bed, then when she wanted something from him, and now casually. Regardless of context, it turns him on, yeah, but it also plucks a chord that makes him stupid happy. The only stipulation he requested is that O never, ever finds out about it. 

“I don’t know what I’ll do if I get pregnant, Mr. Blake,” Clarke says, babbling now, veering into whatever little space she goes to, which also means she’s ready to come. “Please, please don’t come in me.”

They have a complicated network of safewords, gestures, soft stops, and hard stops in place at all times. She lifts up an OK sign with her thumb and forefinger, which she doesn’t have to do, but it’s nice of her when she’s telling him explicitly not to do something she definitely wants him to do.

“Should’ve thought of that before you failed the class, baby,” he says. “You want that A, don’t you?”

She lets out a sad, wet little sound like she’s crying, and it shouldn’t go to his dick like that but it does. He reaches between her legs and fingers her, keeps an eye on the small window set into his door, leans down and whispers, “What if someone walks in here and catches you, huh? What are they going to think of you, bent over my desk like this?”

It occurs to him that they are actually, really in his classroom, not building a scene at home, and they might therefore actually, really get caught. Probably by Jaha, of all people. Whatever. There are worse things than losing a job because he fucked his girlfriend in a public space. 

He pounds into her harder while only barely teasing her clit, which he’s found is way more effective than being rough. Her thighs start to tremble. 

“Getting fucked for an A and enjoying it this much?” He tsks. “Pathetic.”

She shakes her head. “You can’t make me come. I’m not, I’m not going to —”

Now he’s close to coming too, but he doesn’t like to finish before she does, which often leads to some ridiculous bedroom competition. Clarke usually wins. 

He flicks a little faster at her clit. She lets in a short, sharp breath, then ducks her head and bites her forearm to muffle her cry. Her cunt pulses around him. She doesn’t squirt this time because he’s avoided her g-spot, thankfully. He doesn’t have a spare pair of pants on him. 

“No, no, please don’t,” she says as she comes down. “I don’t want a baby. Daddy, no,” and  _ oh fuck.  _

He wraps a braid around each fist and pulls her back onto him, fucks her shallow and dirty, and comes so hard he feels like he blacks out for a second. He returns to consciousness in just enough time to pull out halfway as the last surge comes out of him, right near her entrance.

He pulls out slowly. Her cunt flutters as it pushes out his come. A fat dollop rolls over her clit and down, drips to the floor with a loud smack.

He taps her hip twice.  _ You okay?  _ She taps the desk twice.  _ I’m okay. _

Once he tucks himself into his pants, he falls back onto his chair and it rolls until it hits the wall. His bones feel sloshy like liquid.

Clarke stands upright and straightens all her clothes. She’s an absolute mess. A gorgeous, brilliant, amazing mess. Sometimes he loves her so much he thinks he might fall to pieces at her feet.

She pulls out the ties from her braids, combs her hair with her fingers and props herself on his desk. She looks woozy and fucked-out, so beautiful he can’t do anything but stare. He can’t even get the energy to close his mouth, let alone finish cleaning up his classroom. 

“Happy anniversary,” she says.

“It’s our anniversary?”

“One year since the day I came home.”

He knew that, but he wasn’t sure which anniversary was the one they were going to be celebrating. Side effect of knowing someone so long: there are a ton of anniversaries.

“Was that my anniversary gift?” he asks.

“No, that was _my_ anniversary gift. I’ll give you your gift when you get home.”

“I should get you a real gift.” He knows she’s not big on material possessions, but he should at least do something.

“You don’t need to do anything,” she says, and leans down to press a light kiss to his lips. “I gotta get going. JP wouldn’t come in, so I left him in the backyard.” 

He catches her wrist before she can step away. “Nuh uh. We gotta do the thing.”

“Ugh,” she says, and stamps her heel like a child.

“How do you feel?” he asks as he inspects her knees. Red but not bruised. Yet, anyway.

“Five,” she says dutifully. They have a one-to-five scale, one being bad, three being just okay, and five being great. Numbers are a lot easier to remember than words after sex.

“How was that for you?” He rolls over to his desk and plucks a tissue out of the box.

“Five. You?”

He wipes their come off her thighs. “Five.”

“Did I go too far at all?”

“No. Did I?”

“Nope. Well —” He considers it. “By that I mean we probably can’t do this again.”

“I know. But I’m glad it worked out this time.”

He pulls her underwear out of his pocket and holds them out for her to step into, which she does, then he slides them up her legs. “Anything you want me to do better?”

“No, Daddy,” she says, just to bother him.

He swats her ass lightly. She makes a choked sound, still sensitive. He wishes they had a bed so he could do this properly. Usually there’s a massage involved, sometimes a first aid kit as necessary, a shower, food and water. Maybe a nap. It all depends how far into her headspace she is and what she needs to climb out of it. They pretty much do everything by the book now. He has hundreds of articles bookmarked in a complicated series of folders, all with titles like, “Everything You Need to Know About RACK,” “101 Funishment Ideas for Your Little,” “So You’re a Daddy Now.” They make him feel kind of skeezy, because the websites are always Web 1.0, black backgrounds and red text circa 2004, or worse, abandoned forums like virtual graveyards of power discrepant sex. It all seems so shallow and ridiculous — and a bit cringeworthy, if he’s being honest — when he reads about other people’s experiences. He has yet to find any semblance of the romantic underpinning of his dynamic with Clarke reflected in his research. It’s not about sex with them, not really, and it never has been. 

“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” he asks.

“Five by five.”

Old Bellamy would doubt that, question her further, maybe insist she wait while he gets a bottle of water from the faculty lounge and a granola bar from a vending machine. New Bellamy trusts her self-assessment. If she says she’s fine, she is. And if she’s not, she would say so. That’s maybe the biggest difference between what they used to be and what they are now. They both know, protect, and respect each other’s boundaries. She hands control over to him sometimes, and can pull it back whenever she wants, no questions asked. He’s even getting to the point where she could straight-up leave him and he’d be okay with it. He didn’t think he could ever have a relationship like that, completely devoid of attachment. He would be hurt, of course, but he wouldn’t suffer, if that makes sense. Not like he suffered with Gina or when he pushed Clarke away. Not even the numb void of breaking up with Echo. He trusts Clarke so much that if she left, he would believe it was the best thing for both of them, and he wouldn’t need to know why. He used to think loving someone meant possessing them, protecting them, worrying about them, keeping them forever clutched in his grip. Now he knows that loving someone is in his willingness to let them go. His therapist didn’t even tell him that. He figured it out on his own.

He stands and cups her face in his hand and kisses her. “I’ll finish up here and see you at home, okay?”

“Okay.” She kisses the tip of his nose. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

 

* * *

It was September, when the school year had just started, that he realized maybe he wasn’t okay. Not in the shameful, guilt-ridden sense he’d carried around with him for a decade, but something, somehow, bigger. So big he couldn’t see it, like standing at the foot of a mountain thinking it's only a steep incline. A shadow he lived with for so long he no longer noticed it. Being in the constant presence of someone else brought it to his attention. When he was alone, it felt like he lived in a vacuum. His moods didn’t matter because there was no one around. But with Clarke, he could feel every jolt of his mood swings, every ounce of unnecessary exhaustion dragging him under. He got irritated at the stupidest things. Clarke would laugh at something on TV, the cute little laugh that he objectively loves, the kind that ends in a dorky snort sometimes, and some stupid voice in his head would think,  _ Oh my god, shut up.  _ Of course he didn’t say that, and the moment it was thought, he overrode it, but the fact the thought was there at all troubled him. Then there was the need to lie around in the dark for hours on end some days. Quiet days, Clarke cheerily called them, as if they were totally okay, which, he guesses, is one downside to being in a relationship with someone so accepting and adaptable: most of the time, she works around him instead of calling him out on his bullshit. She’s always done that, because she trusts him. It rarely occurs to her to do anything else.

She has her own problems to contend with now. Despite enjoying living in the bungalow with him, some days she gets stir-crazy, especially rainy or cold ones where she can’t leave because she can’t think of anything to do. So she flits around the house, cleaning this or that, reorganizing or arranging, then sits back down for a few minutes only to get back up and do it all again. On this particular day last September, he snapped. 

“Will you chill the fuck out?”

He didn’t think it was a big deal. He talked to O like that all the time. Echo too sometimes. They’d tell him to shut up and mind his business. But Clarke looked at him like he stepped on a rabbit or something. And only after that initial split-second of hurt did her face harden, and she said, “I’m bored,” like it was his responsibility to entertain her.

What he should have said was, “Okay, let’s find something to do.” What he actually said was, “Go be bored somewhere else.”

So she left, and he found out later she went to Columbus to visit her mom and Marcus. Bellamy fumed for a bit, let himself wallow in his guilt like old times, then he realized Clarke was going to come home and pretend nothing happened and sweep it under the rug. She would believe she was being annoying and it was her fault anyway and she deserved it. She might have gone so far as to change her behavior around him so it wouldn’t happen again. The thought horrified him. She’s so narrow-focused, she probably wouldn’t try to see the bigger picture, that his crankiness that she finds so weirdly endearing had the potential to be toxic to her, and had long since become toxic to him. He needed to be proactive about fixing it, didn’t want to be the kind of guy who needs told by his girlfriend to get help. It had taken years for Clarke to come back to him, and he wasn’t about to risk that by being a grouchy, controlling asshole who needs a wide berth of space. So he immediately made an appointment with his GP and looked up some therapists. He texted her a handful of hours later with a screencap of the appointment confirmation in lieu of saying sorry, because they’re not supposed to do that anymore. Instead he said,  _ Thank you for being patient with me while I get through all my shit. I love you. _

_ I’m proud of you!  _ she said.  _ I love you too! Be home soon!  _ Then she sent him a picture of an almost-full Scrabble board.

So he’s been seeing a therapist every other week, and he’s on a good mix of meds now. He’s not perfect, but he’s less irritable than he used to be, and being around not-Clarke people doesn’t exhaust him as much. He has a few coping skills to help work through some of his odd behavioral tics. He doesn’t feel the need to control absolutely everything. He’s rarely in a bad mood. He laughs easier than he used to. And most importantly, he’s grateful for what he has, instead of lamenting what he's lost.

 

* * *

He gets home later still feeling blissed-out and wobbly, has to go back to school tomorrow or the next day to finish up what he didn’t get done today, which was nearly all of what he’d intended to do. He opens the back door and hears the metal jangle of JP trotting toward him from the hallway. His head and tail are dipped low and he’s still limping from his paw surgery. They’ve only had him a month or so, and he’s gained plenty of weight, looks much healthier than when they found him. He still doesn’t like Bellamy; the vet thinks he’s afraid of men. Bellamy tosses his keys in the bowl by the door, sets aside the bouquet of sunflowers he bought for Clarke, and kneels down, wincing. Like JP, Bellamy is also still healing from his leg injury. 

“Come here, buddy,” he says, and JP walks shyly forward. It’s only when Bellamy’s hand is on his head, scratching behind his ears, saying nice things to him about what a good boy he is, that his tail starts to wag and he remembers that Bellamy is Mama’s friend, not an intruder or somebody who wants to hurt him. He’s really not very bright, which is pretty obvious, but whenever Bellamy calls him stupid, Clarke covers his ears and says, “He can  _ hear  _ you.” 

Bellamy always had two ideas of what Clarke would be like as an adult: just as sensitive and scared as she was growing up, or cruel and aggressive. Broken. He thought the former would inevitably lead to the latter, because sometimes he thinks that’s what happened to him. She’s neither, though. Last month they were out on a run together (they’re a couple who go on runs together now) and a stray dog came across their path, not friendly at all — it was growling, shaking. It wasn’t putting weight on one of its back paws. He couldn’t tell what the breed was, some kind of pit mix maybe, not quite a puppy but still very young, and Bellamy's instinct was to keep running. He would stop to help a friendly dog, but not a mean one. Too risky.

But Clarke, being Clarke, bent down a few feet away from it, put her hand out palm-down and said, “It’s okay, I just want to see what’s wrong with your paw.”

“Clarke, this isn’t a good idea.”

“Just trust me, okay?”

She inched closer and still the dog continued to growl, louder this time, could snap at any moment, but Clarke stood still and kept cooing at it. Not even ten years ago she would have been totally freaked out, maybe not outwardly expressed it, but she would have gone home and called animal control, or let Bellamy deal with it. When she was even younger, she was terrified of dogs in general, even ones on leashes and in backyards, would hide behind Bellamy’s legs or hold his hand until they got far enough away. Now, she’s not afraid of anything. She lives fearlessly, all the time, and not in a way that seems blind or naive. She carries a profound assuredness, a passive belief that anything that comes her way is something she’s capable of dealing with, and dealing with well.

Eventually the dog leaned forward to sniff her hand. The growling turned to whining, as if deciding to take a risk trusting them and begging for their help, and she shifted her hand palm up and rubbed its neck and ears. 

“He’s in pain,” Clarke said. “We need to get him to a vet.”

Bellamy doesn’t know how she did it. She whistled at him and he started following them home, filthy, half-starved, and limping, over a mile. When they got back, they sequestered him into the backyard and cleaned him up, fed him, and took him to the vet. They found out he was less than a year old, which explained the big paws. The vet said he was probably abandoned based on where they’d found him. 

So, now they have a dog. His name is Jean-Pierre for a reason Bellamy still doesn’t understand, and he is completely, one-hundred-percent Clarke’s dog. Not that Bellamy hasn’t done his best to befriend the dog, but JP loves exactly one person, and that person is Clarke. Bellamy can’t blame him. 

JP follows him into what was once the guest room but is now an art studio. Clarke is blasting nineties pop music so loud it throbs through the floor. She’s at her desk, drawing on her tablet. Each brush stroke dashes across the screen of her massive iMac. He can't tell what it is. Probably a freelance assignment. She has her pinched I’m-making-art face which means she’s not going to notice him unless he gets her attention, so he gets out his phone, opens their shared Spotify account, and pauses the music. She looks up and pouts at him.

“I was listening to that.”

“Pick a hand,” he says.

She points to his left arm, the one that wasn’t just holding his phone. From behind his back, he pulls out the sunflowers and hands them to her, leans down and kisses her cheek. “Happy anniversary, baby.”

“I get dicked-down in your classroom  _ and  _ flowers? I’m the luckiest girl in the world.”

JP rests his chin on her thigh like he’s feeling left out, so Clarke shows him the flowers and lets him sniff. He tries to bite them and she pulls them away, sets them on her desk. “These are not flowers for puppies, Jonathan-Peter. You cannot eat them.” She looks up at Bellamy. “Ready for your present now?”

“I guess.” Whatever it is, it’s going to be over the top, and he’s already rehearsing in his head how he might turn it down, or ask her to return it. They spent so many years with their no-gifts rule that it still feels wrong.

He follows her out of the room, JP limping behind him, a Griffin-Blake family conga line all the way into the garage. Clarke parks her Bimmer in here now and he keeps his truck in the drive because the door won’t close unless he’s about two inches from the wall, and also because one time he nicked his window on the way in, and Clarke won’t let him live it down.

She opens her trunk and gestures for him to come over. It’s a dead body, he thinks. Clarke finally snapped and killed someone and now he has to help her bury the body.

But when he looks inside, all he sees is a backpack. Not a school backpack, but the big kind with an external metal frame. The kind Clarke carried on her back around the world. It’s brand new, with tags on it and everything. Before he can fully process the implications, she clicks around on her phone and hands it to him.

On the screen is an email. A flight confirmation. 

“You’re leaving me?” he asks.

“Look closer.”

He scrolls down. Two weeks from today. Two tickets, one way. Layover in San Francisco. First class. 

To Rome.

“You’re taking someone to Rome?”

“Oh my god. I’m taking  _ you _ to Rome.”

He looks at the backpack, then to Clarke, then to the phone, then to JP who seems very excited for them, then to Clarke again. “We’re backpacking through Rome.”

“Knew you’d get there.”

He shoves the phone back into her hands. “I can’t accept this.”

“Why not?”

“Because Abby paid for it.”

“She did  _ not.” _

“You’re telling me you paid for two first-class tickets to Rome.”

“Yes.”

“With what money?”

She hesitates. “My trust fund.”

“You have a  _ trust fund?”  _

“This is exactly why I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d give me that face. That you’re-such-a-spoiled-princess face.”

“How have I known you for twenty years and just now find out you have a trust fund?”

“Maybe we should go inside.”

So they do, and they sit down on the couch, and JP whines until Clarke helps him up. He lies down between them, his head on her lap while she massages his ears. 

“I thought you’d be excited,” she says.

“Is this why you made me get a passport?” She had told him it was for emergencies. She even did all the paperwork for him and took his picture. How did he fall for that?

“Yes.”

He runs a hand through his hair. He's shaking. His heart is pounding. “I’m not a traveler, Clarke. I’ve never even left the country.”

“You don’t want to go?”

“No, I — let’s work out the semantics first. What do we do with this guy?” He points to JP.

“Mom and Marcus will take him. They’re very excited about it.” 

“How long will we be gone?”

She shrugs. “However long we want. Up to when the school year starts I guess, so anywhere from a couple weeks to three months.”

“Where all will we go?”

“Wherever we want.”

“Where are we staying?”

“Wherever we find.”

“I’m beginning to think you don’t have this very well planned.”

She’s grinning at him like she finds this all  _ so  _ amusing. “I have one plan.”

“Okay,” he says, suspiciously.

“I think we should get married.”

“Married.”

“Yeah.”

“In Rome.”

“Yep.”

“Married in Rome.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Are you proposing?”

“I’m pre-proposing. I need to know you’ll say yes so I can do something big and public and embarrassing, preferably with Octavia involved.”

"I resent that you think I won’t propose to you first.”

“You better hurry because I’m going to do it soon.” She scratches behind JP’s ear and finds a good spot. JP’s un-injured paw thumps against Bellamy’s thigh. “And I figure next year we can do Australia or New Zealand or something. For like, a honeymoon. And the year after that, Central America.”

“You want this to be an annual thing.”

“For as long as we can manage it, yeah. You’re a teacher, I’m a freelancer. I’ve got money to spare. There’s no reason we can’t.”

“What about when we have kids?”

“We’ll either take them with us or leave them with Mom and Marcus.”

“You’d be willing to leave our kids for an entire summer.”

“Maybe not an entire summer, but a month or so, I don’t know. I have two years left on this IUD anyway. We don’t need to plan that far ahead.”

“Kids aren’t a spontaneous decision, Clarke.”

“You’re right, but it's a decision we've already made well in advance. And anyway, you’re just freaking out like I knew you would, so I came up with a plan to calm you down.”

“Does it involve sex? Because I’m kind of worn out. I'm too old for two afternoon delights.”

“No, it involves food.”

 

* * *

An hour later, they climb down to the shore with a picnic Clarke had already prepared. It’s finally warm out after a long and awful winter. The dam is where Bellamy used to take Clarke and Octavia to blow off some steam on summer afternoons. Across the river are rolling hills of forest; to the left, the dam itself, a towering wall with small streams of water trickling out; to the right, the highway, rush-hour traffic having waned, only the occasional semi passing over the bridge. It was here he taught them how to fish and skip rocks and find Trilobites. JP can’t navigate over the jagged rocks, so Clarke picks him up and carries him under her arm like an unwieldy football. They throw a blanket over a tilted slab of broken concrete and divy up the food — potato salad, deli sandwiches on pretzel buns from Bellamy’s favorite bakery, peanut butter chip cookies from there too. Clarke wraps JP’s leash around her ankle, but he’s not going anywhere anyway. They eat and sit in silence as they watch the murky brown water wade past. The bugs haven’t come out yet for the season, and the sun has just started to set. Nobody else is around. 

“Do you think our kids will like us?” Clarke asks. “I know they’ll love us, but will they  _ like  _ us? As people? Like, do you think we’ll all be friends one day, the way I am with my mom?”

It’s not a thought he’d ever considered, since his mom was sick and withdrawn for so many years, and she pushed him away during the final part of her life in an attempt to keep him from hurting when she passed, but it only left him wishing he’d known her better. He still thinks about her every day. 

“I think they will,” he says. Old Bellamy’s thoughts flicker through his head:  _ if  _ you live long enough to see them grow into adults,  _ if  _ they live long enough to become adults. Old Bellamy worried a lot about Ifs, considered every single If he could conjure and its myriad of consequences. He always envied Clarke’s ability to think straight ahead without being bogged down by doubt. He taught her how to see the bigger picture, ask hard questions, think critically. Now he’s trying to learn from her, understand that you can be aware of the bigger picture but never truly see it. No matter how hard you try, you can only ever pay attention to one small thing at a time.

When they finish eating, they let JP off his leash to run around, knowing he can’t get too far with his limp, knowing he wouldn’t want to anyway. They walk down the bank together holding hands, keeping an eye out for smooth flat rocks. For what feels like the hundredth time, Bellamy teaches Clarke how to flick her wrist just so, standing behind her, one hand on her stomach, the other over top of hers as they reel back together and fling forward and let go. The rock bounces on the water one, two, three times. She gets competitive, insists she can make it skip four times, but she can only manage two. Bellamy gets one four-skip, and Clarke tells him she will stay out here  _ all night _ until she beats him. JP is in a bit of a crisis, because he wants to chase after the rocks but he doesn’t want to get in the water, so he sits at the edge of the shore whining and hopping from paw to paw. 

By about the dozenth rock, Bellamy bends down to pick up another, this one flat and jagged, a triangle, and it’s not a rock at all but a piece of broken concrete from whatever used to be here before the dam, whose rubble remains among the shells and fossils and stones. He thinks of ruins. He thinks of the Pantheon, the Theater of Marcellus, the Temples of Portunus, Saturn, and Vesta. He thinks of marrying his girlfriend.

“Holy shit,” he says, standing, ignoring the ache in his knee as he stares at the piece of concrete in his hand. “We’re getting married in Rome.”

He flings it into the river at the same time Clarke cheers in victory. It doesn’t skip, of course, just sinks with a dull plop. She jumps into his arms, legs wrapped around waist, and presses a hard kiss to his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been an absolutely wild ride. I am so grateful for all of your kind words and insight and feedback. Writing this fic kept me afloat during a really rough time, and at the beginning, I didn't quite know what it would turn into, but I'm glad it turned into this. 
> 
> If you enjoyed this fic, please share it! You can [reblog the photoset](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/bettsfic). There's also [a playlist I made](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7Mb1QY46hyl9NhX2HbpGFi), and a [playlist from anon recs I received](https://open.spotify.com/user/sadrobots/playlist/6MvYDfjEj4BNrdxX8F5iMy?si=wHfNc4YRT-SyH8xKUJZ0ag) over the course of posting. If you want to peruse additional headcanons/drabbles/info I wrote for this verse, check out my [training wheels tag](http://www.bettsfic.tumblr.com/tagged/training-wheels).
> 
> There is a small chance I will be turning this into an original work with slightly darker themes and alternate POVs. I am not sure on what platform, if any, I would be making this work available, so if you would like updates on this and my original writing, please [subscribe to my mailing list](https://tinyletter.com/betts).
> 
> Enormous thanks to my beta, [aerialiste](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerialiste), who wrangled my shoddily defined antecedents and improper use of transitive verbs with aplomb. She is the best human in the universe and I am so happy to have her in my life. 
> 
> I know I have an open translation/podfic rule, but for this fic in particular I ask that no translations or podfics be made of it. Art is fine, though! Please note also that I love and appreciate comments; I turn on moderation so you can see by my posting that I've read them even if I don't necessarily reply to all of them. If you have a question or comment you specifically want me to respond to, please send me an ask on tumblr. 
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](http://www.bettsfic.tumblr.com) and [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/bettsfic).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [you smell like the devil (you feel like the lord)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16344776) by [bilexualclarke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bilexualclarke/pseuds/bilexualclarke)
  * [Do I Know You?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18714214) by [HelloMrOperator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelloMrOperator/pseuds/HelloMrOperator)




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